German and American Methods of Production
FEW Americans realize the vast stride which the German metal industries have taken in the last few years. The great iron and steel manufactures of the Rhine district — of Düsseldorf, Essen, Dinsburg, and Oberhausen — have attained a remarkable development, owing partly to the coal-mines of the Rhine and of Westphalia, to the great waterway of the Rhine and an excellent system of railroads, and partly to economic conditions which it may be interesting to compare with our own. The rise of some of the great German shops reads like a romance.
The German shops are obliged to do a great many kinds of work. This is because they must compete with foreign machine-works, and consequently have to turn out a more varied product than the American shops, which are protected by a high tariff against foreign competition. The American manufacturer, through his protection, has the opportunity to specialize. By giving his whole attention, thought, and energy to the perfecting of a few tools, or of a single one, he is able to undersell in European territory the native tool-manufacturers, and this despite the lower wages paid there.
Another advantage which the American industry has over the German is shop efficiency. German manufacturers have not the thousand and one devices which we have for doing away with manual labor; they do not yet understand, in the majority of German shops, how to operate the greatest number of tools with the smallest number of men. This calls for the highest degree of intelligence and skill, such as is found to-day in our best American shops. One can still see in Germany two men at work on a gearcutter intended by its American designer to be run by one man.
But the Germans are learning how to get the most work out of tools; they are copying as far as possible our American shop-organization, and are putting more engineering thought into their designs than has been given to the subject at any time in the history of tool construction. While the mechanical skill remains in our favor, every tool imported into Germany is subject to scrutiny, and if engineering skill backed by careful mathematical deductions can make an improvement, the German will be the first to discover the fact, and within a short time a new machine with improvements will be on the market.
Many of the metal plants in Germany are small compared with ours, but no comparison detracts from the importance of the Krupp works. The city of Essen does not present the common type of industrial community as it exists in any country: it is simply a one-man town. In 1811, when the first crucible furnace for casting steel was set up by a poor hard-working young man, Frederick Krupp, the total population was under 4000. In 1901 it was 183,500, out of which the Krupp contingent numbered about 84,000. Now this and a great deal more is essentially the work of one man, and it is unparalleled in the history of industry. The corporation now owns ironand coalmines, and has put up more than four thousand houses.
This great plant, which employs in its steel works at Essen, its works at Buckan, its shipbuilding yard at Kiel, and in its coal-mines, blast furnaces, etc., a total of more than 63,000 men, has been in existence for a century and has never had a strike.
The products of Krupp’s are very varied. The fame of the house is chiefly associated with war implements, but all kinds of finished and unfinished materials for use in railroads, engines, and mills, and for other industrial purposes, are turned out in large and small quantities.
A specialty here is the casting of very large ingots of crucible steel; it is a remarkable sight and an object-lesson in German methods. Ingots of eightyfive tons are cast — a feat not attempted elsewhere. The steel is melted in small crucibles which are carried by hand from furnaces ranged on both sides of the foundry to the ingot mould in the middle. At a signal t he furnaces are opened, the crucibles are drawn out and seized by a small army of workmen who run them down to the mould and pour them in. The manoeuvre is carried out with military precision and promptness. In a moment the place is aglow with the white heat of the furnace, the figures run from all sides and come staggering down in pairs with the pots full of liquid steel. It is a scene of intense activity, but without confusion. One after another the glowing pots are emptied; the molten metal runs like thick soup and plunges into the mould with a sputter. In a few minutes all is over; the furnaces close again, the used crucibles are thrown aside, and already the cast mass begins to congeal and change color. The steel so made is the purest known, close-grained, homogeneous and uniform throughout, and of great strength. No such work could be done in this country with our impatience of hand-processes.
In some of the smaller foundries, women are employed in great numbers. They load the cars with coke and limestone, and do considerable of the general work around the plant. They usually begin work at six in the morning and leave as soon as the charge is drawn from the furnace — about four in the afternoon. One could not help noticing the contentedness of these female workers, who found time to knit and crochet between the charges.
The shops have been built at very different dates and vary accordingly, the most recent being quite up to date in construction, though not superior to those in our country and at Sheffield. They possess in a marked degree that neatness and cleanliness which is the most distinguishing feature of German factories, even the foundries showing an absence of the usual dirt, smoke, and confusion. Great order and system are maintained, largely with a view to the prevention of accidents. The RhineWestphalian Engineering and Small Iron Industries Association gives as the first of its rules for the prevention of accident that the gangways in all workshops must be broad enough to exclude, as far as possible, injury to workmen by machinery or transmission parts in motion; and must not be blocked by the heaping of material or the transportation of articles. Compare this condition with that of most of our engineering shops, where manufactured or half-manufactured articles are lying about promiscuously, blocking the gangway and affording no adequate room. The entire freedom from such disorderliness in German shops and workrooms undoubtedly conduces to efficiency as well as to safety; and it is secured chiefly through the habits inculcated in all alike — workmen, managers, and owners — by the military discipline they have alike undergone. Fencing of machinery is, for this reason, perhaps less complete and costly than that which is required in most factory districts in America.
With regard to the installation of machinery and workshop appliances, the larger German establishments are, generally speaking, quite up to the mark. They make use of electric power, automatic tools, and similar modern devices to as great an extent as any in America. There is no hesitation in introducing innovations, and no opposition on the part of the working people. Machinery and tools are procured from other countries without regard to any consideration but that of suitability; but Germany is year by year becoming more self-sufficing in this respect. Their small tools are nearly as good as the American, their heavy ones equal to the English.
German workshops are well equipped with sanitary washing and dressing accommodations. The workmen are more cleanly and careful in their habits than the Americans; they generally keep a working set of clothes and change before and after work. Consequently lockers are provided. Baths are common, particularly shower-baths with hot and cold water, and in summer are much used. The practice of providing comforts and conveniences for the employees is more common in Germany than in this country.
In some of the small metal industries, such as cutlery, the development of the trade has been hampered by the guilds. In the city of Solingen, for example, where they have made knives and forks, scissors and swords for centuries, the art has been jealously guarded by the old guilds, which strictly limited apprentices and output. Every master had to have a trade-mark, which was registered by the local authority, nailed up on the church door, and had a legal validity. The greater part of this industry is still carried on at home, as in old times, on the ‘chamber’ system. It is encouraged by the local authority, which provides the men with gas and electric power, in place of the old water-wheel. The government has issued special orders in regard to the conditions under which work shall be carried on in the homes, with a result that the death-rate due to phthisis has been reduced from 18 to 3.1 in the thousand.
Cheap and inferior cutlery is turned out in Germany with the name Sheffield stamped on it; but they also produce first-class cutlery that will compete with any in the world. One is amazed at the incredible variety of knives made. One firm in Solingen has nine thousand patterns on its books for Germany alone, and may be actually making over three thousand to order at the same time. Every trade and district of Europe has its own knives, and they are constantly making new patterns for new societies or districts. In some cases one firm will average two new patterns a week for two years. This is a trade which will not be standardized, and that is one reason why America has failed to compete. Herein lies an important difference between the European and American manufacturer, — the former is always anxious to meet the needs of the market, while the latter standardizes certain brands and offers nothing else.
A great many of the working people in this district own their own houses; and it is the custom of the place to keep a goat, the ‘poor man’s cow.’ There are over fourteen thousand goats in the city.
The German working people are, as a class, good, steady, regular, and trustworthy; they are not as quick as the Americans, but they do what they are told to do, and do it well. We could not give to our mechanics, clever as they are, a piece of work to be done from foreign plans, with a metric system different from our own; but German mechanics may often be seen at work on an engineering order from England, using the original drawings with the English measures. At the same time they are not in the least inventive; they never make suggestions, nor is there any plan of encouraging them to do so; but they keep the rules and do not shirk. This is one of the principal reasons why German industry is so strong.
Roughly speaking, the working hours are ten a day. In the engineering works of Düsseldorf the hours are as follows: Begin work at 6.30 A.M.; breakfast, 8.15 to 8.30; dinner, 12 to 1.30 p. M. ; tea, 4.15 to 4.30 P.M.; close at 6.30 P.M. Total, 12 hours minus 2 hours for meals, equals 10 hours; or 60 hours a week.
In the Krupp steel works at Essen, work is begun at 6 A. M. ; breakfast is from 8 to 8.15; dinner 12 to 1.30 p. M.; tea 4 to 4.15; close at 6 p. M., making a total of 12 hours, minus 2 hours for meals. In the cutlery works at Solingen the time allowed for breakfast and tea is longer for women and youthful workers than for grown men, giving two or three hours less of work in the week.
Note the time required for meals; it is as characteristic of the Germans, as indifference to meals and hurry are of our people. American workmen in the iron and textile industries usually work about 56 hours a week, except in the southern cotton mills where they often work 62 hours a week. There is a movement on the part of legislatures to reduce by statute the number of hours of work a day to eight. As a rule, the only interval allowed here is for dinner, and that is generally no more than half or three quarters of an hour. In some American shops, at moments of unusual pressure, no interval is allowed at all; the men work at the machines during their dinner period and eat their dinner as best they can. The machinery runs continuously with two shifts of workers, and this is the secret of the great production of the American steel mills in particular, and of the excessively high wages earned in them. Respect for meal-time belongs to Europeans.
Every branch of textile working in Europe is the outgrowth of a household art. When new conditions appeared, due to the changing from hand-processes to automatic machines, each mill or small factory that sprung up specialized in one or another of the textile operations, as wool-washing, weaving, carding, or spinning. The manager of a weaving mill frequently knows little if anything of a spinning mill, and vice versa. One of the results of this mill organization is that the manager of each establishment develops into a more competent man in his specific vocation than one who is hindered, like the mill-managers of the United States, with the superintendence of all the processes involved in the converting of raw cotton or wool into finished cloth. On the other hand, the concentration in textile work in America has tended to economy, and improvement in textile machinery, particularly in the matter of speed. The fastest-running machines in the world, for the formation of so delicate a fibre as silk, are in operation in the silk mills of Paterson, and so nice is their adjustment and so well perfected their mechanism that they run even more smoothly than the slower-geared machinery of Germany.
Parallel with this improvement in machinery has been the progress made in the quality of goods produced. While the early American weavers turned out simple pieces, that is, plain silks, the American silk manufacturer to-day finds nothing too difficult for his skill or too expensive for the market. Slowly, but surely, the textile products of domestic manufacturers have crowded out foreign products, except for some novelty or new design in silk fabrics which the home silk-weaver of Germany has developed by the aid of the government.
Germany is not famous for the cotton industry, which is still in a comparatively early stage of development; but its advance is shown in the history of Miinchen Gladbach, where the chief cotton factories are situated. In 1860 the population of the city was about seventeen thousand; it is now over seventy thousand, and the increase is due to cotton. This compares with the progress of some of our southern cities. There is no doubt that Germany means to go forward with this branch of textiles.
No foreign market can compete with the United States in the manufacture of shoes. In Germany the shoe manufacturers send out their agents to find out what is wanted in the trade, and then attempt to manufacture ladies’ shoes, slippers, men’s and boys’ shoes in the same factory. Here the manufacturer turns out a certain product which is his specialty, and sells it wherever possible. If he manufactures several products he has a separate factory.
The German shoe manufacturers say that they cannot work on the American basis of manufacturing a certain shoe product. They are obliged to collect their trade from almost every country except America; it comes in small orders. They have to accommodate themselves to everybody’s whims, make patterns and styles for every district of Europe, which increases not alone the cost of production, but perhaps, to a greater extent, that of distribution. In the German shoe shops, moreover, the old conditions of apprenticeship still hold, hampering the change from hand to machine processes and preventing a large output.
The average American thinks that the success of Germany is due to low wages and long hours of work. This is not true, for, if labor is cheaper there, coal is dear, machinery dearer, and imported raw material pays a tax. The industrial supremacy of Germany is the effect of definite and deliberate political action. Thirty years ago the German statesmen realized that the nation was inferior to the American and English in natural resources and natural ingenuity; this inferiority forced upon their attention the value of thrift and of education. Thrift was multiplied by capital, and education multiplied by industrial efficiency.
America and England have served them as models of shop-organization and equipment. They have imported American and English machines and tools; they have engaged the best men from the best shops of these two countries and have copied their methods of work and organization; but besides this they have devoted special attention to a matter which America has ignored to a great extent — the scientific or technical education of their people. In order to make this clear, it will be necessary to note the great change that has taken place in our industrial world in regard to the training of workmen.
In old times the education of the artisan was by a well-defined apprenticeship to a master with a number of workers and a few apprentices, who took the boys and taught them the complete trade. This was a very satisfactory method so long as the master had time to teach the apprentice, and the apprentice had time to learn all about his trade. But a great scientific advance revolutionized industrial and economic conditions. Factory system and modern application of machines and capital to manufacture took place on a large scale.
Men, women, and children were needed to tend the machines, and young people, who would, under ordinary conditions, have become apprentices, were attracted to the mills and factories, etc., by the large initial wage. The master became so busy maintaining himself against the competition of others, and keeping up with the technical advancement of his trade, that time failed him for the instruction of his apprentice, while the latter found that the trade had developed to such an extent that he could no longer learn its fundamentals by mere activity in his master’s workshop.
Thus the apprentice, no longer a pupil, has become merely a hired boy, who, while making himself useful about a workshop, learns what he can by observation and practice. If he sees the interior of his master’s home, it is to do some work in no way connected with his trade. In old times the master worked with his men; now he rarely works at his trade; his time is more profitably spent in seeking for customers, purchasing material, or managing his finances. The workshop is put in charge of a foreman, whose reputation and wages depend on the amount of satisfactory work that can be produced at the least cost. He has no time to teach boys, and as there is little profit in the skilled trades for the boy between fourteen and seventeen, he is not wanted. Boys of this age are in great demand in factory work — cotton, worsted mills, etc.
The old apprentice system is not likely to be revived. The shop is no longer the training-school for craftsmanship. The workmen of the future must learn how to work before they seek employment. All professional men do this. What the scientific schools are to the engineer and architect, what the business college is to the clerk, the trade school must be to the future mechanic. The rapid development of technical education in modern times is due largely to the discovery that, without such instruction, the trades themselves were deteriorating.
Practice in one section of a trade does not always produce skill, and gives no knowledge whatever of theory. A boy or girl who applies for a position at a mill is given some one operation at a machine which runs very rapidly day in and day out. As the result of performing this operation day after day, it becomes a habit, and is done without much mental effort. This is particularly true with certain industrial operations, as ‘doffing ’ on the spinning frame, that is, replacing full spools with empty ones. This work can be performed only by young people during the age of fourteen to seventeen, and depends on dexterity of the fingers. A boy begins and leaves work at the stroke of the bell, when the machinery moves and stops, and really becomes a part of the machine. This continues till the age of seventeen, when the fingers become too stiff to do the work, and the boy or girl is practically turned on the street, having gained no knowledge or skill for future use. If a boy during these ages has a natural curiosity for information about the processes that precede or follow his own operation, the machine he tends, or the power that drives the machine, or the simple ordinary calculations used in figuring speeds, drafts, etc., he has little opportunity to see; and if he asks about what little he does see, older workers will tell him to find out as they did. The whole atmosphere around the mill is such as to stifle the propensity of young people to know. If the boy desires to change to another department in order to learn the different processes, the overseer will refuse him because he is most useful in his present position. The outcome of a boy spending these precious years doing work which requires no thinking, and receiving no systematic training outside or inside of the mill, is that he loses the power of initiative, the habit of thinking, and all interest in his work. By the time he reaches manhood he knows less than when he left school, and has not sufficient education to take the responsibility attached to a better position. Such is the universal condition in large industrial centres.
Experience has shown that evening schools do not appeal to tired children. Boys between fourteen and eighteen have the ‘gang spirit’ in them, and after working hard all day they desire companionship of their fellow workers on the street corners, at music halls, or moving-picture shows. Their eyes, wearied with long labor in the day, cannot endure the fatigue of book-work by night, but they are revived and charmed by the splendor of gay lights of the theatre and moving pictures. Physicians confirm this experience by stating that children of this age should not attend evening schools.
We have built up in the United States at an enormous expense a colossal system of education, and we allow the results of it to be very largely wasted and lost. We cease to educate these all important years, during which we all know that education is most needed and valuable to our working people.
England faced this great educational problem years ago. A half-time system was introduced by the Commission on the Employment of Young Persons in Factories, in 1833, to prevent overwork and under-education. The success of this scheme is shown by the report of the late Commission on Technical Education, which states:
‘ Half-time children of the great manufacturing [factory] town of Keighley, England, numbering from fifteen hundred to two thousand, although they receive less than fourteen hours of instruction per week, and are required to attend the factory for twenty-eight hours in addition, yet obtain at the examinations a higher percentage of passes than the average of children throughout the whole country receiving double the amount of schooling.’ Similar experiences in different parts of England and the Continent show that the long-time system (all-day schooling) and the omission of industrial work are in violation of the laws of physiology.
The German Government has solved its educational problems in a more satisfactory manner than any other country. According to their scheme of education, every worker in a profession, trade, or commercial pursuit, must have not only a general education, but technical preparation for the particular work selected by him. In the United States we believe in the same policy, but apply it to those entering the professions only, disregarding the great mass — ninety-five per cent — that leave school at fourteen.
Germany insists that every child be under educational influence till the age of eighteen. The child leaves the common school at fourteen. He may go to work, to a higher school and prepare for college, or to a technical school. In America he may leave school at fourteen and is not obliged to attend any other school.
The Germans act on the principle, admitted by everybody who knows or cares anything about education, that the way to secure a good training for the mind is not to end the school life at the most plastic period, fourteen years of age, or in the ease of foreigners as soon as they can pass an examination, but to insist that every boy shall spend a certain number of hours a week under educational training and sound teaching till he reaches manhood. There is less ‘cramming,’ and the instruction is slower, more thorough, more reasoned, than it can be under our American system of hurrying children through the school. For we must remember that our young men in industrial plants are nothing more than mere machines; they exercise no independent thought any more than the spinning frames or the machine lathes, and the result is that they become deadened.
The German Government supports continuation schools, called Fortbildung Schule, for boys above fourteen to continue their instruction after leaving the regular day schools. Attendance upon this school is obligatory in most places for the boy till he is eighteen years of age. The weekly period of instruction is ten hours, of which three hours come on Saturday morning from 9 to 12 o’clock, and three hours each on two working days, from 9 to 12 in the morning, or from 4 to 7 in the afternoon. This arrangement of hours can be changed to suit the needs of the employer. No instruction is given after 7 p. M.
The instruction is adapted to the needs of the various trades; there are classes in arithmetic for machinists, loom-fixers, etc. The terms used in the class-room savor of the shop and mill. What is three fourths of 25½? does not mean so much to the foundry man as a problem like this: If a copper casting weighs 25½ pounds, and the specific gravity of iron is three fourths that of copper, what will the casting weigh if made of iron? Then again, the same problem would not interest the textile worker unless it involved mill calculations. Working people have minds of a distinctly concrete order. They have intensely practical aims when they come to school, and are unwilling to study systematically an entire subject as they did in the common schools. They demand that the instruction shall lead directly to the specific things they are dealing with in their work. The German continuation school adapts its methods of instruction to meet the needs of the working people.
To give an illustration — the Munich Continuation School for Machinists’ Apprentices offers the following subjects: Religion, machine-shop calculations and bookkeeping, business correspondence and reading, the study of life and citizenship, mechanical drawing, physics and machinery, materials and shop-work. The subjects of instruction are in the closest possible connection with the requirements of the machinist’s trade.
The instruction in physics and machinery, as well as in materials and shop-work, is undertaken by a skilled machinist; the remaining instruction is imparted by teachers of the same grade as those of the common schools.
It is in these schools that those who are to form the rank and file of the metal trades receive their theoretical and basic training.
There are in addition special tradeschools for machinists, such as the Berlin School of Trades and Crafts. The trade-school for machinists aims to render them capable of acting as laboratory assistants, foremen, or superintendents of mechanical establishments. It also furnishes a basis for further studies in special lines. The course covers one year.
The winter term begins in October, the summer term in April. The tuition for each term is fifteen dollars. Pupils of small means may be allowed free scholarships by the Board of Directors.
When workingmen of the different metal industries have completed the courses in the lower industrial schools — continuation and trade-schools — and desire a preparation for positions between journeyman-machinist and engineer or draftsman, they have every opportunity, as there are four classes of middle technical schools: the schools of industry (industriel Schulen), the master-workmen’s schools (Werkmeister’s Schulen), the higher trade-schools (höhere Schulen), and the Technicums.
The master-workmen’s schools are more ambitious in their aims than the lower industrial schools. They were established for the purpose of preparing the apprentice-journeymen to become master-workmen. Pupils cannot be admitted before the age of sixteen, and they are required to have had two or three years of practical experience in the machinist’s trade, and to show industry and desire to learn. The studies are chiefly in the direct line of the machinist’s trade, and the course is from one to two years, and requires the whole time of the pupil.
These schools have long been popular in Germany among the metal-workers. Some of them are intended mainly for men of a much larger workshop experience than the minimum limit, who wish to broaden their trade horizon. They take in the older men in the metal trades, those who have been long out of school and who never expect to become thorough book students, but whose strength lies in their shop skill. These men have only moderate aspirations for advancement; they may be ambitious to own little machine-shops of their own, but do not expect to rise high in the scale or to become heads of great industries. Such men usually have receptive minds and possess good judgment. They expect to obtain in the schools, through direct practical teaching, the necessary theory to enable them to carry out the higher demands of the trade. These schools must of necessity be, to a great extent, evening schools, for they exist to give a chance to men already fully occupied who, in all probability, have families dependent upon them, and cannot give up a day’s work. Even to exceptional men of this stamp, recognition, in the shape of advancement, comes but slowly.
Younger men who attend the higher trade-schools for machinists and metalworkers have, in some respects, more opportunity. These schools demand for entrance a fair degree of advancement in elementary mathematics and physical service, and accept only well-developed, ambitious young men, who may expect to attain to the higher positions in larger machine-shops and metal manufactories; some of them may even enter the technical universities to prepare themselves for the highest engineering positions.
The Technicums have in many instances a lower age-limit than the other schools — admitting at the age of fifteen, with the requirement of a year or two of high-school study, and only one year of practical experience in the machine shop. Thus it becomes a lowgrade school of practical technology.
At the head of such institutions stands the school of technology, corresponding to our similar school, giving the highest possible training in engineering. The training received in this school often exceeds the requirement of the industries; hence the need of institutions of lower grade to meet the actual industrial demands.
There are also special schools for shoemaking, tanning, and other trades. In the textile industry, German schools hold high rank. The importance of textile schools cannot be too highly estimated. They are the main factor by which the German textile industry maintains its competitive power in the foreign market. As has been said above, cheapness of labor is not sufficient to attain this end; cheap hands must be taught, and taught well, or their work in the end will cost more than that of more expensive hands who possess greater skill and have acquired a more thorough understanding of their trade.
The financial assistance given by the German Government in textile education has enabled enormous progress to be made. All these schools have large staffs of lecturers and assistants; the fees are moderate, the usual charge being fifty dollars a year for the day course. There is a large attendance, although the entrance examinations are severe. The fees charged to foreigners in all these schools are enormous, being usually five times the amount charged to German students.
Most of the textile schools have museums attached. The one at the Crefeld Textile School is very interesting. It is divided into two parts: one a room in which modern styles are exhibited, the pieces being constantly changed; here one will often find local manufacturers with their designers and customers, studying the fabrics and making new designs for the trade; the other, the museum proper, which is in two rooms, each being divided into sections, and containing over ten thousand pieces from the earliest periods to modern times. The Germans make a specialty of finishing and designing, and by the use of the museums are able to outdo the Americans.
The German Government recognizes the duty, and exercises the right, of regulating industries in the interest of the employed; but in doing so, it is careful to keep in view the general industrial interests. The German laws are consequently in many respects much less stringent than ours, which seem to have been enacted under spasmodic influences without any guiding principle. This may be explained by the fact that the German Government has been obliged to foster industries, and, in order to do this efficiently, must strike, in its legislation, a happy medium between the claim of the employed for protection, and that of the community at large for the promotion of industrial enterprise. In America and England the necessity for encouraging manufactures so far has not been considered, and the legislatures have merely from time to time taken up the duty of protecting the employed, with such drags upon their action as the private interests of employers have been able to effect. The protection, in short, has been all on one side.
But the time when this plan could be pursued with safety here and in England may be said to have passed. Manufacturing industries have now come to such a delicate balance that the possibility of their toppling over must be taken into account; and it is for the interest of the community to prevent such a catastrophe. If our industries do not need encouragement from the legislative branch of the government, they certainly do require protection from serious shocks. It is, therefore, instructive to note the way in which the German Government has dealt with this matter, and the excellence of the results.
The most stringent regulations passed by the government are those affecting children and women, and it is in this respect that the state has clearly in view the interests of the community as represented by its workers. The total number of children under fourteen years employed for special reasons and exempt by law in the manufacturing industries in Germany is about 1630. These children are between thirteen and fourteen, and the hours of employment are restricted to six, with half an hour interval for meals. Between fourteen and sixteen they may work not more than ten hours, they must have an hour’s pause at midday, and half an hour both in the forenoon and afternoon, unless their working day is not more than eight hours; no continuous period exceeds four hours. During the rest periods, any participation in work is forbidden, even remaining in the room is allowed only when their own department of the work is brought to a complete standstill.
When past eighteen, they cease to be youthful workers and are under no special regulations except that all under twenty-one must be provided with a ‘work-book’ or register, containing name, age, birthplace, nature of employment, date of engagement, discharge, and other particulars. All boys under eighteen are obliged to attend a continuation school for nine or ten hours during the week, where they receive instruction in the technical knowledge of their trade, and religious instruction from their own clergyman. This time is taken out of the regular day-work without loss of pay. In a number of larger engineering and machine-shops the writer saw no youthful workers.
Workmen may be fined to the extent of one half of their earnings, except in cases of acts against fellow workmen, of offenses against morality, or of those against regulations, maintenance of order and of security, when fines may be imposed to the full extent of the average earnings. All fines must be applied to the benefit of the workers, and generally go to the sick fund, but this does not affect the right of employers to obtain compensation for damage. All particulars of fines imposed must be entered in a book, which is open to inspection by a government officer.
Every industrial establishment must have a set of rules hung up in an accessible place in each department, stating the hours of work, with the regular interval for meals, the time and manner of paying wages, the length of notice terminating employment, and the conditions under which notice is unnecessary; also the particulars of punishment, including fines, and the objects to which they will be applied. Punishments which wound self-respect or offend morality are inadmissible. These rules are equally binding on employer and employed, but before they are issued, opportunity must be given to adult workers to express their views, and the rules to which objections are made must be submitted within three days of issue to the factory inspector, who may order amendments if they are not in accordance with the law or with special regulations. Punishments not provided for in the rules cannot be imposed, nor can other grounds of dismissal be included in the contract.
It is a rare thing for a firm to have any differences with its workmen. Indeed, I was definitely informed by one firm that there had been only five cases of dispute in nine years, and these did not come from the workmen as a whole, or any considerable number of them, but were cases of individual complaint. They have in Germany an institution corresponding to the Conseil des Prud’hommes in France, which they call Gewerbe Gerichte, to which are brought all cases of disputes of employees and employers. The average number of cases tried by this bureau never exceeds five hundred a year. The bureau consists of five or three people. The government appoints a chairman who is a lawyer, and there are representatives of the employer and the employee also appointed by the government. Sometimes two are selected instead of one. Their decision is not final, as is that of the arbitration board in this country. If a workman or employer does not accept this decision, it is binding for only two weeks. Then the workman may leave, or the employer may discharge him. To give an illustration: One of the workmen in an engineering firm thinks he should receive four marks more a week in wages. He goes to the firm and makes the demand. They refuse him. He appeals to the Gewerbe Gerichte. The Gewerbe Gerichte says, ‘No, do not pay it.’ The workman can leave at the end of two weeks by giving a two-weeks’ notice; or, if the decision is given in favor of the workman, the firm is obliged to pay him the increase for at least two weeks, and then they may give him a fortnight’s notice to quit.
Notice of termination of employment is usually a fortnight, but it may be dispensed with on the part of an employer on the following grounds: false representation, theft, or other criminal acts; leaving work without permission, or refusing to fulfill the contract; carrying fire or lights about, contrary to orders; acts of violence or gross abuse directed against the employer, his representatives or family; willful damage; inducing member of an employer’s family or his representatives, or fellow workmen, to behave in a manner contrary to law or morality; inability to continue work; or an alarming disease. Notice may be dispensed with by the workers on corresponding grounds; also for nonpayment of wages in the prescribed manner; neglect to provide sufficient work for piece-workers; or some danger to life and health in the employment which could not be inferred from the contract.
The rate of wages is not included in these rules. The existence of such a code, legally binding on employers and employed, is a characteristically German method of doing business; it is in accordance with that respect for law and order which is such a marked feature of German life, and contributes materially, no doubt, to the smooth working of the industries. The rights and obligations of ‘ work-giver ’ and ’work-taker’ — to use the excellent German terms — are publicly defined and guaranteed by law. This conduces to tranquillity, and makes attempts at individual bullying or vague talk about ‘rights ’ palpably futile.