an influential factor in the development of manufacturing was the invention of steam power. the industries that use machines were forced out of the homes and into the factories. there was no alternative. the steam driven machines produced goods so cheaply that the hand power, or home machine could not earn its owner a livelihood. thus the factory system developed, partly because of the mechanical necessity of concentration where the power from one engine could by the use of shafts and belts be made to run a great number of machines, and partly because of the natural tendency of the man with the most money to acquire possession of the factory and have others work for him.
later the invention and perfection of the electric generator and motor made possible103 the distribution of power and the machine, with its motor attached, again became feasible for individual ownership. difficulties, however, exist. these difficulties are the present capitalistic ownership of the material and machines, a lack of properly organized co?peratively conducted sources of power, present land ownership, house arrangement, and of getting this power to the worker; and what is of much more moment, the complete possession by capitalistic interests of the entire system of trade or distribution from the great railway combination to the retail shop, through which the individual worker must market his products.
wage-slavery doomed.
the ideal—and as i believe—an attainable ideal in a large number of roadtown manufacturing industries is co?peration in the use of land, machines, power supply and transportation of products, and individualism in the actual operation of the machines and working the land. this will forever solve the labor question by abolishing the wage-system. let104 us look at the details as they will be worked out in the roadtown.
the first essential in such a system of co?perative individual producers is power. for this the roadtown will have to compete in the markets of the world.
roadtown will possess great advantages in this respect where it passes water power and coal fields and can buy them. roadtown power plants, co?perative stores and cooking plants, will be located where railroads, canals or rivers cross the roadtown, when practicable, to save the double handling and freight on coal. otherwise the coal will be loaded into roadtown cars by steam shovel and hauled at night to the power houses where the monorail coal cars will be dumped directly into the stoker reservoirs. the same heat will be used for generating power, heating the building, cooking the food and for whatever other purpose heat is required and the chimneys of roadtown will be miles apart. there will be no wagon haulage of fuel in roadtown life. other sources of power, such as water, wind105 or waves, when developed will become available for the roadtown.
the transmission of roadtown power will involve none of the losses from which exposed transmission systems suffer because of the weather. the actual cost per horse power used will be far less than in present city distribution.
a work room in every home.
every room in roadtown will be wired for light and power, but the general building plan will presume that all regular industrial operations are to be conducted in a room on the lower floor of the house which will be equipped with power sockets and bolt plates in the floor and a non-vibrating foundation installed for machines. this room will be located where it will have ready access to the transportation lines, probably by a trap through the floor through which a case of goods can be dropped to a position where it can be automatically swung aboard a slowly moving “pick-up” car at night, something after the manner a mail-bag106 is now snatched from a post beside the railway track.
this work room will be separated from the rest of the house by sound-proof walls. of course no room can be made absolutely sound proof, for where fresh air goes sound goes also. very noisy industries as well as those that deal in bulky or malodorous substances must of necessity be out of and at a safe distance from the resident portion of roadtown. the roadtown work room, like the co?perative cook shop, though it is there to be used and will be equipped for a work room, yet its use as such is not obligatory. the power socket may be plugged, a rug thrown over the bolt plates and the work room used for a children’s play-room, a sun parlor, a palm garden, or a living-room. it is rented with the house, equipped to receive suitable machines, but if the tenants have other uses for their time, it is their affair.
the following industries will come early to the roadtown: clothing manufactures, knitting, lace and needle work, millinery, artificial flowers and other decorative work, including107 all art and the so-called art crafts, jewelry, toilet articles and small household notions of all sorts; wood and cold metal workings, toys, hats, gloves, shoes, book-binding, and many similar types of light manufacturing.
the roadtown corporation will have machines for suitable roadtown industries made of certain standard sizes to fit the workroom described. these machines will be for sale or to rent to the tenant. under the old system of industry, men, constantly fraught with the fear of losing their jobs, are always anxious to buy and own the tools of production. in roadtown practice there will be nothing to gain by private ownership over publicly owned machines. the corporation will charge just enough rental to maintain and repair the machinery and replace with new ones when the old are out of commission. the operator of the machine will find it more profitable to invest his savings in the bonds of the corporation than to make his own repairs or to replace his own machines. another advantage of108 renting your machine is the option you have at all times, that of exchanging it for some other kind of machine.
whether the factory is brought into the home, or the man induced to go to the factory will, of course, depend upon the nature of his work. sometimes it will be cheaper to move the product, sometimes cheaper to move the man. in either case the perfected system of transportation is of equal importance.
the selling of farm products co?peratively is practical, as is being abundantly proven in the united states and to a greater extent abroad. there is no valid argument that can be put up against co?perative buying of the raw material and selling of the finished product of the roadtown workers. such co?perative buying and selling should not for a moment be classed with the graft tempting work of the municipal or government buyer. in the case of the government the money which is used to buy cavalry horses, for instance, is raised by revenues upon diamonds or cigars. there is here no relation whatsoever between the man who pays the taxes and the buyer of109 the goods. in co?perative buying the connection between the man who pays and the price that is paid will be close indeed. the buyer of leather for roadtown glove makers would be held even more closely responsible for honest buying by the consumers of the leather than by the stockholders of a present corporate glove factory, for in the corporation factory there is a chance to hide poor buying behind good selling in the final report to the stockholders. every move of the buyer and seller of roadtown workers is then and there made known to the roadtown workman or group of workmen who has the immediate right to recall the blundering representative. the trouble with government officials is that they are too far removed from the people who supply the money which they spend. in roadtown that connection will be close and quick in action. it will be corporate industry with interest to small or large investors, but control and profits for and by the workers.
the bondholders will have an ever vigilant and directly interested army of workers who must of necessity safeguard their mutual welfare.110 the worker cannot avoid this service to the bondholder, hence he is the best protected bondholder in all the world. i do not here refer to values; that is covered elsewhere.
a new type of factory.
i believe there will develop in roadtown a form of factory that is intermediate between the large privately owned factory as it exists to-day and the individual work room of roadtown. i refer to the small co?perative factory, organized by a band of workers whose separate operations are needed to complete a single article. for illustration, suppose a group of employés of a shoe factory are dissatisfied. instead of going on a strike they would organize a co?perative roadtown association and move into roadtown. they could arrange for houses adjoining and throw their individual work room into a continuous work room large enough to accommodate them. they could elect their own foreman and decide the proportion of profits to go to different grades of work and embody these conditions in their charter. these inner co?perators would111 buy and sell through the central organization of the roadtown, as will the individual workers. here we will have the mechanical saving of the combination of the several operations—the commercial saving of centralized buying and selling, and the profits going to the workers, not the least of which would be the satisfaction of independence.
once roadtown becomes an established fact, single workers, little groups of workers, and whole armies of workers will be seen leaving the old system for the new. it will be a strike for all time, a strike from which the hiring of strike breakers will be an empty retaliation, for the roadtown worker will not only work better but his products will be less destroyed in the mill of competitive selling—he can undersell the strike breaker, being employer, and because the food and house and things he buys of the other workers will cost him less and serve him better; the workman who joins this final general strike can work and live better, yet cheaper, than his successor in the old factories. it is the beginning of the end of the barbarous so-called “factory system”—and the end is that112 each work will be performed in a way that is most economical to society as a whole.
a special message to women.
the roadtown has a message not only for men, but for women, and most especially for young unmarried women who are looking forward to the time when they can fulfill their highest mission on earth, that of establishing a home and raising a family. you need not put off the wedding any longer than the time when you can pay a couple of months’ rent on a roadtown home, a deposit on a machine, enough to buy raw material to keep you and the machine busy for a couple of weeks and enough seed to plant the garden. if “john” has a position he can retain it and commute without leaving you to stare out the window of a city apartment with nothing to do all day or frightened and lonely in an isolated farm house. if he hasn’t a job he may run a machine and work the garden also. if he is good to you, you will be happy, and he is apt to be, for he knows you are not dependent upon him for a living now that you are freed from household113 drudgery and can earn as much as he. the roadtown will enable you to marry the man of your choice regardless of his ability to thrive in the present unfair struggle for a marriage portion and enable you at all times to free yourself from him on account of your economic independence, if he proves to be the wrong man.
the saving in co?perative buying and selling is going to be the means of throwing many men out of employment, just as has been the case with the inventions of all labor saving machinery and methods. when a man in middle life has to fill a new occupation it is indeed a serious matter, but one against which it is useless to fight. if a man had been sent down the track swinging a lantern to warn an approaching train of a broken rail, we would hardly countenance the holding up of traffic after the rail was repaired, because the man wished to continue swinging the lantern. the roadtown makes no apologies to the workers whose services it will render useless. when we get well, we dismiss the doctor. it is said that some doctors keep us sick to keep their114 jobs. be that as it may, certainly there is no denying that he who opposes co?peration, in an attempt to preserve wasteful or unnecessary operations is a malpracticing economic physician. to the man roadtown throws out of a job, it offers a chance to engage in productive labor where one cannot get out of a job, because so long as men receive the full fruits of their toil, with free and untaxed exchange, over-production as an economic calamity is an absolute impossibility.
the end of monotonous labor.
thus far we have discussed agriculture and manufacturing as industries to be engaged in by different sets of workers. in practice, i believe they will be bountifully intermingled. a man may work at a shoe stitcher for three hours, turn off the power and go out and hoe potatoes. likewise his wife may run the same machine, or a lace machine for a while, and for a change of occupation operate the electric hoe (something on the order of a dentist’s drill, only much larger) in the vegetable or flower garden. not only will roadtown115 free the factory worker from wage slavery, but it will free both farmer and machine worker from long hours of toil at monotonous work. it will free our civilization from the curse of making machines out of men; it will sift out the indolent and place them at the bottom of the scale of life’s good things. it will reward the industrious as much as man can be rewarded without being given power to enslave his fellows. it will make men free; it will abolish machine men, factory and sweat shops, and child labor and woman’s economic dependence on man that makes her a sexual slave. and such work, such making of children into men and women instead of automatons, may lessen the speed at which some machines are fed, and may even make tissue paper flowers on hats dearer, but it will certainly make cow butter and big red apples cheaper and real flowers more abundant and raise the per capita valuation of human life.