Well before AI, but for the same purposes, the largest industries of the day invested in research and development to minimize costs and eliminate demands of labor–fire workers and break unions to maximize profits–with the automatic coal-feeder and kerosene as a fuel.

‘New Labor Displacing Machines’ by Winden A. Frankenthal from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 14 No. 5. November, 1913.

THE number of labor-saving devices is constantly growing. Every day brings new inventions, with which one man is enabled to do the same amount of work as formerly five, ten, twenty-five, or even more men could do.

The capitalists welcome especially those machines which do away with skilled labor and which can be operated by any man from the street, and which at the same time cripple or possibly break up one of the craft unions.

The following lines are of especial interest to firemen, coal passers and coal miners.

Everybody knows that the job of a fireman is a very hard one. During the summer the coal-dust covered boiler room is as hot as an incubator, while during the winter the fireman works with his face and chest in a cremator and his back in a cold storage, not to forget the dust which makes a coal storage of his interior. It also is a known fact that it takes quite some experience to keep up the correct steam pressure wanted and to distribute the coal in the right manner below the boiler.

In the old way the fireman bad to open the door of the furnace, take several shovels of coal and distribute it evenly with clever swings below the boiler, being careful that no coal touched the boiler. Once in a while he had to stir up the fire with a poker, to open or close the draft pipe and then start again shoveling in coal. In the meantime the coal passer is busy with a wheelbarrow to bring the coal in front of the fire.

Now one should think it quite impossible and rather dangerous to do away with man supervision of the steam boiler, but this is now done by the new rotary under-grate, the mechanical grate feeder and their automatic regulator.

The above picture shows the two first ones, which are operated as follows: The fine-grained coal comes alongside the factory or power plant, either by railroad or ship and is shoveled at once, practically without human help, by means of an elevator or steam shovel, into the coal bunkers, situated above the boiler room. From here a number of tubes go down into the boiler room and depose the coal in any wanted amount directly upon the rotary wander-grate.

This grate runs around and is moved by two rollers, of which one is placed in front and the other one in the rear of the furnace. The coal burns during its way toward the rear of the furnace and is totally used up when the grate turns around the rear roller like a belt to come back again around the front roller. In the meantime the feeder tube is continuously depositing coal upon the front part of the grate.

The automatic regulator, which stands usually in the engine room, operates the whole arrangement. It can be adjusted to any wanted steam pressure and keeps it up, too, and also once put in function does its job marvelously well and practically without human help. It even keeps book about its work by recording the slightest variation of steam pressure.

In case that suddenly more machines are put to work in the factory and the steam falls below the wanted pressure, the regulator acts at once automatically; it increases the draft and the velocity of the wander-grate and therefore, a greater quantity of coal passes below the boiler during a given time. Consequently more heat is produced, which yields a higher pressure and more power is the result. When the desired pressure is reached the regulator slows the movement down to its normal run. If, on the contrary, a number of machines are put out of operation, the regulator decreases draft and the speed of the wander-grate, which, of course, has the opposite effect.

This new way has too many advantages for the owner of a factory to keep up the old system. Total burning of the coal, perfect regularity of the steam pressure, saving of coal and the principal saving of human labor. With this new arrangement only one man is needed, where formerly twenty to twenty-five were necessary.

It is obvious that an invention like this is adapted to cripple the firemen’s union. The use of oil as fuel and also the diesel motor will do the rest, as with both systems no firemen are needed.

But also from another side the unions of the men of the coal industry are threatened by ”solid kerosene.”

The capitalist press (Chemiker and Techniker Ltg. Vienna) is praising this new combustible, by means of which the capitalists believe themselves to be in position to fight down any coal strike, or at least to prevent a coal strike like the one that occurred in the early part of 1912 in England.

According to the Daily Express, solid kerosene consists of a mixture of 6 percent kerosene and the rest of coal dust, straw and all kinds of refuse, and is pressed with an Armstrong-Morgan patent press into solid bricks. One ton of these bricks is said to have the same heating power as three tons of ordinary coal. It is also asserted that a big steel mill in Sheffield, England, which, in anticipation of the general coal strike, provided itself with a few presses, not only did not suffer a bit from the strike, but made heavy savings in their expenses for fuel.

Be it as it will, but for one who has studied economics and knows of the advanced principles of labor organization, it is pretty hard to see how the capitalists will be able to fight successfully a modern labor movement with–after all–a dead machine. They probably think the worker’s brain must be fossilized and that “craft unions” are the last stand of the laborers. When they hear of the Industrial Union they are not so sure of success.

Considering the “identity of interest within their class,” the steel mill workers would drop the tools to help the coal miners, and knowing that an injury to the coal miners is also an injury to all the rest of the industrial army, one branch of industry after the other would fold its arms to help the coal miners win.

Imagine a battle in which the foot soldiers of the army are losing and the artillery standing by, declaring that it is not their fight, and that it doesn’t concern them whether the battle is won or lost. Has anyone ever heard of such suicidal tactics? But the craft unions are still practicing this nonsensical system in their industrial battles. Only One Big Union can cope successfully with solid kerosene and modem machine production and bring the working class through to economic victory.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n05-nov-1913-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf