the control of technical processes which become more and more perfect with the increasing knowledge of scientific laws and mechanics fling the craftsman in ever increasing numbers upon the scrap heap and confiscate his precious possession, his particular little piece of property.
The present system which is the great confiscator of property and which in the name of preserving property rights destroys all inferior property rights, has him in its clutch and he has to go the way of the small bourgeois. He cannot save himself.
Every strike proves his position to be more and more precarious. The scab becomes more and more of a terror to the skilled laborer, even to the highly skilled laborer, for the scab can so much the more readily now take his place. It is not difficult to learn to operate the mechanism of modern production, and a few weeks of employment of men who began in total ignorance of an industry are sufficient to make those men competent to run an industry effectively enough, at least, to destroy any chance of the success of the strike.
The scab is for the most part an unskilled laborer. Against him the craftsman contends in vain and he has no real ground of appeal to him. For has not the craftsman looked down upon him hitherto as a person possessing no specialized trade and therefore no property and has he not also on these grounds forbidden him the advantages of unionism?
The unskilled man takes the place of the skilled one. If he does so in the iron trade today he will do so in the building trade tomorrow. In fact he will invade any trade where men are required and he stands a chance of making even an uncertain living.
A force even more powerful in the break up of the crafts than the progress of mechanism is the other factor on which Marx counted, the process of capitalist development itself.
The formation of the great concerns has broken
