Author: fitz

The passing away, recently, of Gabriel Edmonston, that well-known veteran member of our organization and its first President, held an interest for us quite apart from the element of personal loss which it was only natural that all keenly interested in the affairs of our organization should feel, for his death, in a manner, marked a definite breaking with the past—or to be more precise, with that period when our organization was as yet unborn and the plight of the average journeyman carpenter in the world of American labor was comparable with that of one of the lost tribes of Israel.

Edmonston, picturesque figure that he was, in recent years, more and more appeared to stand out as one of the last links in the chain which bound us to the unorganized, or shall we say, the disorganized past, when the carpenter was almost a pariah wandering over the land, the victim of miserably low wages, excessively long hours of toil and wretched working conditions. One might say that in his later years he became a living testimonial to the efficacy of the instrumentality which brought about the amelioration and betterment of the carpenter’s condition—and that instrumentality was organization.
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How many machinists know a good file when they see it? I don’t believe one in fifty can take a pile of files and pick out the best one. The average man will pick up two or three, turn them over, squint along the corners, pick out the straightest one and call it as “good as any.” They don’t seem to have any idea that a file may be soft, or fire-cracked, or burned. If they were choosing a cold chisel they would look out for all these things, but “a file is a file” so long as it has teeth and tang.

Talk about certain tools being abused in the machine shop, or in any other shop. What is more abused than a file? No matter what job is on hand, they are expected to take right hold of it and never let go. Hard iron, soft iron, steel or lead, brass, copper or wood, it makes no difference. The file must go at it hammer and tongs.
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“I wish I had never learned this trade,” said a mechanic in our hearing a few days ago; and impatiently throwing down his tools he left the shop, with his day’s work but half completed. He went out to spend the remainder of the day in idleness, dissatisfied alike with himself and with his employment.

How often do we hear the very same expression and see the same disgust evinced in nearly every trade or avocation with which we are acquainted. Why is it? Is the evil in their occupation, in their employers, or is it in themselves? Some might presume one thing and some another; but we answer:—Mechanics, it is in yourselves.
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Probably few of our readers have any idea of the number and scope of the questions that continually pour in upon us, or of the labor involved in satisfactorily disposing of them. We certainly do not answer them all, and for at least two very good reasons, one of which is that we do not know enough. This is of course, very much to be regretted, both by ourselves and by those who apply to us.
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Workmen in almost all trades can be separated into two classes, and pattern makers are no exception to this rule, for everywhere we find on one hand the careless workman and on the other the ambitious man who looks ahead. The indifferent pattern maker still abounds and seems to have no ambition at all, or rather none except one which is all absorbing and has for its goal six o’clock and pay day.
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