Although it requires only eighteen hundred people to do all the human labor in the factory many of them never touching a machine there is a total product every working day in the year of at least three million individual pieces; that is, once the machinery is installed it enables the comparatively small number of eighteen hundred people, with small running expense, to turn out a billion wheels, cases, bells, pinions, etc., in a single year. The machines are bewilderingly complicated in their arrangement, but so simple are their results and so perfect their management that, although the writer spent an entire day in the place, he failed to find a single screw, hand, spring, or other tiny object apparently out of place. Two million watches and clocks are shipped from this factory every year, and the cheapest one undergoes at least eight hundred distinct operations. Is it not wonderful that you can buy for a single dollar a watch or a clock that required eight hundred different kinds of operations to produce? It would appear to many readers that it ought to be an easy matter for the foreign watchmakers to build up their trade again by installing machinery like this in their own shops. That would indeed be an easy matter if they could purchase the machinery; but they can not. No amount of money would induce an American watchmaker to sell one of his machines or tell how they are made. They are invented for the most part by each company's own employees, are made in the company's own shops, and to keep their mechanism a secret they are not even patented by the different firms. There is no fear of ideas being stolen either, for no stranger is ever allowed inside a big watch factory, and even the employees must not enter any room but their own. As for the employees in charge of the machines themselves, they are all selected for their exceptional honesty, and no secret has ever leaked out through them. As each machine turns out its given number of individual pieces-cases, stems, rings, etc. they are brought in handcarts to the "assembling room," down the length of which run four wide tables, at which sit, every few feet apart, several hundred nimble-fingered men and women, who put the parts of watches together as readily as a child puts together his house of alphabet blocks. The moment the last screw is set the watch starts off of its own accord. Then it is placed in a large glass case and kept under its assembler's eyes for four whole days, and if it works correctly—as is practically always the case, the machinery being so true - it is sent to the "finishing room," where it is placed in a case, provided with dials, hands, and given a final rub, after which it is sent to the "test room." In the latter place every watch remains at least four days more, running all the while, being wound by machinery every day. One day the watch lies flat, the next two days it lies obliquely, and for the remainder of the time it stands in a perpendicular position. It is subjected to days of alternate heat and cold, and to a number of other tests beyond the layman's comprehension, and if after all these maneuvers the watch does not lose or gain more than one minute in the four days, it is passed into the "shipping room." This is in the case of a cheap watch. For an expensive one, the test is materially the same, except that it must not gain or lose even so much as a minute in the four days it remains under the tester's eyes. STENOGRAPHY AND TYPEWRITING1 BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE TAKE it for granted that if you determine to fession that is not overcrowded. If you were to weed out all the incompetents and leave only the really good and capable operators you would be surprised to see how scarce the good ones are. How you are to train yourself for this profession depends upon what you are already. If you have not at least a common-school education, the first thing for you to do is to get it, for without it you can hardly hope to be more than a living attachment to your typewriting machine. You can not know too much to be a really good stenographer and typewriter. Keep your eyes open, and read read good books and read the newspapers. You must know what is going on, and what has gone on. Learn something about national and state politics and politicians; something about literature, something about art, something about mechanics, something about - about everything. "Ah!" I think I hear you exclaim, "if I knew as much as that I should go into some other profession, and make more money." I am not so sure about that. This is a profitable profession for its professors who know something. I am not trying to show you how you can become a little pink 1 From "Helps for Ambitious Girls." Copyright, 1900, by T. Y. Crowell and Company. 1 and white machine at seven dollars a week. Thousands of girls get that far without any help at all, and apparently without any education, but they are never more than machines with flexible fingers. Such a girl is of no more importance to her employer than the hook she hangs her hat upon. Do you doubt that? Then let us look at the inside of a large office for a moment. Here is a long row of girls, each with the machine in front of her, each playing off copy with the keys. As the manager looks down the row he sees one vacant chair, one idle machine. It is nearly ten o'clock in the morning, and Number Four, Miss Jennie, is absent. She may be ill, or she may have "thrown up her job," in the expressive office language; but no matter which. The cheap girls appear and disappear very readily and very often, and the manager knows what to do. He steps to the telephone and calls up the agency he deals with. "Please have me a steno-typewriter here at eleven o'clock," he says over the wire. "Yes, eleven prompt. Female, seven dollars. All right, good-by." And at eleven prompt the "female, seven dollars," is at the door smiling, and in two minutes more she is at work. There is not even a ripple upon the surface, except that Number Four becomes Miss Annie instead of Miss Jennie. Miss Jennie may be very ill or dead, but the world and the office move on. Is not that pure machine work? You do not have to consider long to see why Number Four, Miss Jennie, is cheap. When she disappears the manager has only to ring the telephone bell and another Miss Jennie takes her place. Or if the whole row disappeared some morning a new row of girls would be in their chairs within an hour. Or if the manager advertised, he would have fifty girls at the door to choose from. But he does not advertise if he can help it, because an advertisement brings so many applicants that they are troublesome. The "female, seven dollars," is abundant, and whatever is abundant is cheap. That would be a discouraging picture if you were to be a "female, seven dollars," but you are not. You must fix a higher mark for yourself than that. We have seen already how calm the manager is over the absence of Number Four. There was nothing in that to ruffle him, for such things happen nearly every day. If he had nothing worse than that to trouble him his managerial path would be smooth. But up at the front of the office is a large pen, or cage, or stall, made of polished oak, in which the president of the company has his desk, with his own private stenographer and typewriter at one side. It is, in short, the president's private office, with thick carpet on the floor; and the manager's face is troubled as he approaches the door and is reminded that Mrs. Jones also is absent. Almost time for the president to arrive, and no Mrs. Jones! There is something to bother a man. Mrs. Jones is something more than the president's private stenographer. She is in reality his private secretary. But as a private secretary might reasonably demand a higher salary than a plain stenographer she is not given the title of secretary. That is no uncommon thing in offices. She is not only a valuable employee, she is almost indispensable, as we shall see. You will not doubt when you meet her that she earns her twenty-five dollars a week, and that the president would rather pay her forty dollars than lose her. But Mrs. Jones is absent, and the manager is worried. |