Nappanee High School - Napanet Yearbook (Nappanee, IN)

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this is being supplanted by machines, with which a ditch such as is used for laying tile can be excavated at the rate of one hundred eighty feet per hour. The sewing machine too, has an important place among machinery. Only by this machine could the demands of society be tilled, for one of these machines can do the work in a day that would be necessary for scores of the nimblest of fingers to do by hand. This is the story that meets us every where. Perhaps the millenmium will come when the ingenious man has made every operation incidental to human existence automatic, and there is nothing left for him to contrive. Let us now consider its effects on society. The machine brings the effect of nature into more effective co-operation with man. The results derived from this fact is clearly expressed in the familiar distinction between hand made and machine made articles. Thus it is easy to perceive that the greatest advantages are to the machine owner. The cost of production being reduced to the minimum, his profits are increased, and increased capital invested in improved appliances is soon repaid, allowing keener competition and increased sales. To the worker it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here arises a social problem that has required the most careful thought and study of eminent and learned men of all departments of learning to solve. With the first appearance of machinery the laboring classes scented danger. They were deceived to the fact that machinery was a curse, that it had decreased the capital of the country and that the employer was benefited at their expense. That they were driven from their employment to starve while the machine did the work. The invention of the spinning jinny and power loom threw thousands out of employment. The typesetting machine displaced the printer. The air brakes took the place of the brakemen. These men were skilled along these lines of labor and could not well turn their hands to other employment. Then riots occurred, and inventors were mobbed. Was this fallacy? Time has proven that it was. The machine came to stay and soon labor lost its antagonism toward it. It soon became evident that if the machine was not an economical advantage it would not be used. It realized that a change of relation was brought about and not a change of existence. For while the machine displaced labor, labor must replace the machine. The capital that was saved by machine labor went into the manufacture of machinery. Mot only did it require labor to build new and repair old machines, but also to oversee and operate them. To build factories, buildings, cars and ships. Thus, new industries were opened which required new workers, and to which the displanted weaver or printer soon adapted himself. The increased consumption of coal and other fuel, thus occasioned, resulted in a greater demand for labor in those lines of industry. Again, the machine has reduced the price of luxuries. Things that were once luxuries are now attainable by working classes. Demand was increased. And this increased demand creates an increased supply, which in turn creates an increase of labor. By the aid of the machine man is able to save his muscle and improve his mind, thus bettering his social condition, and creating a demand in new fields— books and literature. Thus we see that the working people derive great benefits from the economy of effects made possible through machinery. Hence an account of its advantages to the worker as well as the owner: the machine, with its ability to increase the productive power of labor, with an economical saving of expense, must be regarded as advantages to every society. 22

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trmumuj nf Ittaritutmj By BESSIE BEGHTEL N this modern era, machines are receiving more attention than ever before. Every one knows how much labor is facilitated by the application of the proper machines. The machine has become the greatest factor in all phases of economy. To create a machine that will produce the greatest results at the least expenditure of time, labor and money, has become the object of man’s most earnest endeavor. A machine may seem absolutely perfect for its purpose today: tomorrow it may lose its economic value by the invention of some greatly improved apparatus. Let one try to picture to himself the quiet slow moving world in which our forefathers lived. Before the days of the locomotive, or the steam boat, before the time of the telephone, or the electric light or motor cars. Think of the contrast between those days and these; of the revelations that have occurred in the ways and means of economical productions. The beginning of this revolution dates back to the advent of the steam engine. From this iirst steam engine has evolved the magnificent steam ships, which sail our seas today, making a trip in six days, which required Columbus, with his crude wind blown craft, over two weeks to make. From it, too, has evolved the modern locomotive, the user of which is able to transport a thousand times as much each hour, as a driver of an ox team could move in a month. Or it can whirl the traveler from Chicago to New York, a distance of nearly one thousand miles, in eighteen hours. A journey which, if taken in the old time stage coach would have consumed weeks. The advent of the steam engine marks the birth of the factory which has developed into such enormous centers of economic productions. It is in these centers that the advantages of the machine is most clearly shown. Today a child tending the battery of Northrup magazine looms weaves miles, w here the old hand loom worker, wove feet: the modern spinning machine does the work of eighty old time spinning wheels and spins six hundred thousand feet more yarn from a pound of same cotton. Think how the poor darkies worked all day separating the cotton from the seed of only a few pounds, until the cotton gin was invented. In the manufacture of stoves,, three men are now able with the aid of machinery to produce as many stoves in one day, as six men could do without the machine. In this and in other iron and steel industries we find great cranes equipped w ith magnets to lift, and handle heavy billets of iron, steel plates and ingots. These machines are able to lift a load of several tons at a time, thus doing away with an untold amount of labor. In the manufacture of straw goods, with the sewing machine, two hundred men can easily do more work in one day, than one thousand could do before the invention of machinery. The toil of miners is lessened by the application of compressed air machines. The product of this labor is hoisted to the earth’s surface by machinery; loaded by machines into cars for transportation and again unloaded or reloaded by the same means. IIow many hours of hard labor would be required of a man with a shovel and barrow to unload a train of some sixty or seventy cars, tilled with coal? Now in our great coal markets these cars are run on large machines, clamped down by hydraulic clamps, lifted and turned bodily over and its entire contents dumped into tubs ready to be conveyed by other machines into shipholds or coal yards as the case may be. With this system tons are landed quickly and cheaply, and w hat once would have required a week's labor by many men is now done in a day by a few. One of these “tippers” as they are called, is able to handle twenty five thousand tons in one working day. When you read the daily paper of a great city run off on gigantic presses at the rate of thirty thousand per hour, think of the trouble Franklin would have had to produce even one edition with his crude hand press, with which he issued one of America’s first publications. In the great cities where land is so valuable, space is economized by great sky scrapers. Which are only made possible to reach the top by means of the elevator. These in turn are being displaced in large stores by the modern eculator, or moving stair way, which transports more people in less time, occupies less space, and requires less help than the elevator. The machine has found a place in the office. Here is the counting machine, the adding machine, the copying and writing machine. An addressing machine is made by which an office boy can address six thousand letters per hour, at a cost of six cents per thousand. On the farm too, is this tendency to increase the productive powers of labor by the application of mechanical appliances, manifested. In the days before machinery was invented consider how the farmer had to work to till the soil, plant the grain and reap the harvest. Now the steam thresher turns out car loads of grain, where the man with the flail threshed bushels. The same results are accomplished with the reaper, the mower, and all well known farming implements. Few occupations are harder on workmen than excavating trenches, especially under a hot sun. Even 21

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HARRY LAUDEMAN Harry, the manager of the 1907 baseball team, was born August 14. 1888. He finished the grades and high school in a very creditable manner. He intends taking a medical course at the famous medical college of Halmamann, Chicago. Without doubt we shall hear more of this rising genius and his cures if lie survives his present course in chemistry. He is the smallest, but not the least one in the class. He is always the foremost in the movements of our class which have been many and great.