According to the talking heads and their colleagues, Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States because of the anger and fear of a whole bunch of white men who blame immigrants and globalization for taking away, or threatening to take away, all the jobs that properly belonged to red-blooded God-fearing Americans. They got that right, although the pollsters among them didn’t do very well at predicting the election result.
The story now, as though it were new, is that the jobs are being stolen by new technologies. They got that right, too. It all started a long time ago when our distant ancestors discovered a pointed stick made it easier dig up edible roots and then discovered a fire-hardened pointed stick was even better. Sharpened stone points fastened to sticks were much better and they could even be used for killing food animals and hostile human beings. Each time there was an improvement in tools, more product of whatever kind, was produced by fewer people. That didn’t really mean a fur-clad ancestor lost his job. The world was big and human populations were small. There was plenty of work to be done in occupying new territories.
When human populations were tribal, the energy and skills of individuals were at the willing disposal of the tribe. The exploitation of human energy that characterizes slavery was imbedded in the feudal system, when the wealth and power of masters (of noble lineage) depended upon the involuntary servitude of the serfs who did the necessary work of the manor. The feudal system was long dead when the ultimate example of black slavery supported the cotton-growing economy of the American South prior to the Civil War.
Grinding of grains was once done by individuals using mortars and pestles. That changed when mechanization brought mills driven by the energy of wind, water and coal. The spinning wheel and handloom gave way to machines that produced textiles in factories where wage-slaves tended the machines. The work force was small, far less in number than the small crofters displaced by the enclosures, which turned old estates into pastures for Merino sheep.
My maternal grandfather was a wage slave. His father, a journeyman cooper (barrel-maker), was a craftsman and a member of a craft guild. My grandfather would one day be the member of an industrial union. An indenture was signed by William James Chilton on the Feb. 11, 1876, which sent his 13-year-old son, William, to the Tees-side foundry of George Young Blair, maker of triple-expansion marine engines and bronze propellers. Under the tutelage of the aforesaid Blair, young William was to be trained to be a journeyman moulder, a learning experience that took seven years.
During this time his father would be responsible for his living expenses and the cost of tools. During his full term of instruction, Grandfather William was to refrain from playing dice or cards and from frequenting taverns and ale houses. In the first year, he was to receive four shillings a week (about one Canadian dollar). By the seventh year, he was being paid the munificent sum of 11 shillings a week. He was a wage slave.
When Europe exploded into the Great War, he left the foundry to become a lathe operator in a munitions factory.
When the war ended the munitions factory closed and there was no returning to his former trade. He sailed for Canada and found in Saskatchewan work in one of the many villages springing up along the spreading railway branch lines.
Before I went to school, I saw a threshing machine operating north of the village. Horse-drawn wagons were bringing sheaves to be thrown into the maw of the threshing machine. I suppose, all in all, it took seven men to serve the monster machine.
I never saw another threshing machine in action. Tractor-drawn combine harvesters needed only two men to both cut and thresh the grain. Jobs were lost forever. Now automation and robotics have pared jobs in agriculture down to only a fraction of those required before the Second World War. Jobs have been lost forever.
What is called the Protestant work ethic taught that man should earn a living by the sweat of his brow. The concept is as outworn as a Red River cart. More work is being done by fewer people. Lost jobs will not come back. The profits from increased production fill the pockets of investors in new technologies. What is to be done with the jobless? They can’t be allowed to perish for lack of the necessities of life. The programs now in place to help the unemployed are insufficient now and will be more inadequate in the future.
