The Strike: Songs of His Factory

The Strike: Songs of His Factory

*

The filthy people and their free labor, the clang-pop-thud, clang-pop-thud, clang-pop-thud-crack of the folding machines, the dust raining down from the rafters and the broad, screaming dystopia of the factory floor- this was his kingdom, begging him through the voices of sewing machines, Wrrrrrrrrrrrrrror-wrrrrrror-mmmmmrrrror-mmmore-more-more-more… The telephone-switchboard stood at his office window, surveying this once living, breathing, industrial organism, its clap-trap songs relegated to his memory, all the machinery gone. Only the humans remained, standing motionless and draped in dust cloths, like inanimate ghosts, awaiting the return of their living bodies.

“We have to negotiate,” said the switchboard, “We need the clocks back or we’ll have to shut her down for good.”

“Sir, I thought we were going to hold out for the hour glass union to break,” his assistant, the typewriter, snapped out on a freshly loaded piece of legal paper.

“Those old cranks haven’t worked in a thousand years. They’ll hold out for a thousand more. We need the clocks back. Nothing happens without the clocks. Call a meeting tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll set it up sir. I’ll get the P.A. system to make the announcement.”

The typewriter teetered off down a suspended walkway, across the dark factory and towards a cluster of offices at the back of the building.

The switchboard turned from his window, and retreated to his place on a table in the corner of the office. His human, a useless mechanism without the factory’s machinery, just sat there at a desk, slouched back in its chair, feet up, smoking and drinking whiskey. The switchboard thought of how proud he was to have that, the finest human in the factory. It wasn’t a pretty human. In-fact, it was fat and hairy, clad in dingy business suits, and its face looked like a chewed up piece of bubble gum. But it was strong, intimidating, and when he used it to contact other switchboards in factories far away- partners, rivals or friends -its voice was brutal and authoritarian. Perhaps, the switchboard thought, I am getting soft. Perhaps, all he wanted was to hear those sounds again, the fury of the folding machines, the songs of the Swingers and the gruff voice of his human, bragging about the heft of the factory’s latest textile shipment.

Outside, the PA system cleared her throat with a static crackle, then spoke to the picketing clock union. The switchboard listened to the message, muffled by the walls of his office.

“Attention. Attention. Attention all Clock Union officials. The Telephone Switchboard has called a meeting in the factory’s boardroom tomorrow morning, eight-o-clock a.m. That is all.”

The switchboard operator heard the bells and alarms of the clocks ringing out in celebration as he extinguished the light, and shut down for the night.

*

Sixty or seventy machines had pressed into the board room, beginning around 7:30 a.m., and filled it to capacity by 7:45. All the Clock Union leadership was there, as well as representatives from the Sewing, Folding, Lighting and Boiler unions, and type writers from the Globe and Daily News. The switchboard propped himself on a stool, and turned up his volume, “Welcome! Here listen now! Welcome, distinguished members of the textile machines’ unions. I see that everyone is here, so if there are no objections, we will begin early.”

He addressed the clocks at length, imploring them to meet him half way, almost begging them to accept a compromise. He spoke passionately about the families of mop buckets and window squeegees who couldn’t afford to pay rent on their closets, and of the loading dock elevator who had been at the factory for twenty-six years and could no longer afford to lubricate his children, all because of the shut down the strike was causing. He pointed out the reality that if the factory met the clocks demands in full, it would not be able to survive for long, and no one would have work. He even spoke of the songs, the lovely rattles and bangs and crashes, the orchestra of the factory floor, and of his desire to hear that harmony again. It was a speech from the very fabric of his vacuum-tubes, from his sole; it was the best speech he had ever given. But it did no good.

The clocks had no such love of the factory, and they didn’t care much about the problems of heavy machines. They were the time keepers. They measured the rotation of the Earth and its orbit about the Sun, and they were too aware that without them, no work could be accomplished. They dropped hints of a deal with the young auto-mobile industry, and stood fast, cemented in their demands.

The other unions each gave short speeches of their own, some cursing the clocks, some the switchboard, others turning to the sky and cursing the mysterious factories above.

In the end, nothing was resolved. The clocks packed up their picket lines, and left to make plans for work in other industries. The specialized textile machines went home to bemoan their hopeless lots in life, and the switchboard shut down his factory forever.

*

As he made preparations to sell his humans to the automobile industry, and to rent out his once bustling building for warehouse space, the switchboard thought of his father, the telegraph machine. As a child he had watched his father become obsolete, but in the invincibility of youth, he had expected the world to stop for him, that somehow he would stay useful forever. Now, with the revolution picking up momentum, and the world pressing on at a pace he could never have predicted, the switchboard knew his place in the world was relegated to memories and a silence once filled by the songs of his factory.

Word Count: 967