Many times after that I stood for improvements, and was rewarded with the cutting of my prices and the threat of dismissal, and I had the mortification of being “hooted” by my shop-mates into the bargain. The fact of the matter is, workmen and overseers, too, want to run along in the same old grooves, at any rate, as far as processes are concerned. The foreman and manager think they have done enough if they merely cut a price; they are too blind to see that improvements in the process of manufacture is the first great essential. There are many jobs in the sheds which have been done in the same old way for half a century. It is painful to contemplate the ignorance, stupidity, and prejudice of the staff in charge of operations.
Every shed has an institution called “The Black List.” This list is filed in the foreman’s office and contains the names of those who have been found guilty of any indiscretion, those who may have made a little bad work, indifferent time-keepers, and, naturally, those who have fallen into disfavour with the overseer on any other account, and perhaps the names have been added for no offence at all. When it is intended to include a workman in the list, he is sent for to the office, bullied by the overseer before the clerks and office-boy, and warned as to the future. “I’ve put you on the black list. You know what that means. The next time, mind, and you’re out of it. I give you one more chance.”
Not long ago an apprentice--a fine, smart, intellectual youth--was asked by a junior mate to advise him as to a piece of work in the lathe and went to give the required assistance. While thus engaged he was sent for to the office and charged with idling by the overseer. He tried to explain that he was helping his mate, but the foreman would not listen to it. “Put him on the black list,” he roared to the clerk. The lad’s father, enraged at the treatment meted out to his son, promptly removed him from the works, and sacrificed four or five years of patient and studious toil at his trade. It is useless to continue in the shed when you have been stigmatised with the “black list.” You will never make any satisfactory progress; you had better seek out another place and make a fresh start[3] in life.