Machines and Nightmares

I recently finished reading a riveting memoir by Agnès Humbert entitled, Résistance, A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France.  This book is a diary of Humbert's experiences from the time the Nazis invaded France in 1940 to the end of World War II. Humbert was an intelligent  woman who was employed at one of the museums in Paris at the time of the invasion. At the age of 43, she decided to work with some trusted friends to produce an underground newspaper of the same name as the book, Résistance.  The little group of a dozen friends lasted about a year until it was betrayed by an unknown informer. The Nazis executed the men involved by firing squad and Humbert and several other women were convicted to five years of slave labor working in Nazi factories in Germany.

What does any of this have to do with technology? Humbert was assigned to work under the most horrifying conditions at a rayon factory in Krefeld, Germany.  I will skip over the descriptions of the malnourishment, abuse, filth, and inhumane treatment at the hands of the Nazis to relate something she wrote while working at the factory. While pondering the inhumanity and total unpredictability of her situation at the hands of her captures, she remarked in August, 1942:

"I wonder - a worthy subject for meditation - what Descartes would have made of industrial machinery. What a subject for a philosopher! Not just the relationship between man and machine, and all the upheavals, material, moral and social that come in its wake, but simply the thoughts that sometimes come into your head when you are working at a machine. There's no tricking a machine; it's just not possible. A part out of alignment? Production immediately slows down. A loose screw? The whole machine seizes up. I like and admire the incorruptible integrity of the machine. With work done by hand there is always a little leeway, a margin of error, and any time lost can be made up with a little effort or improvisation; machinery, on the other hand, admits absolutely no possibility of inaccuracy or prevarication, is immune to all excuses, lies or flattery, Enduring, unswerving and fiercely tenacious, machines can teach men a marvelous lesson in integrity. The builders of the future, of our future, should take inspiration from man's handiwork, the Blessed Machine!"

I had to think about this for a bit because the machine she was describing was the spinning machine which extruded the viscous rayon pre-polymer through a very fine platinum minaret into an acid bath to form the thread. She had to work on this machine without any protection for her skin or eyes. The pre-polymer is extremely caustic to the skin. The acid is not only caustic but leads to blindness. The slave laborers were offered no protective clothing or gloves and had to work ten to twelve hour shifts even while Allied bombing raids were going on. She was a mass of sores and unable to even see for days at a time. How could she sing the praises of machinery? Because she desperately needed to experience something that had integrity.

Humboldt's countrymen in her opinion had totally lost their integrity in rolling over without fighting back against the Nazis. What kept her alive through her incarceration was a feeling of integrity - she would never bend or yield to her captors. She never cracked under interrogation by the Gestapo when they wanted information on her colleagues. She never once begged for mercy. She was one tough lady.

Humboldt survived the war. She was liberated by the U.S. Army while being held captive in April 1945. She stayed for a few months after her liberation and worked tirelessly, but fairly, to identify the true Nazis in the area that were trying to fade into the woodwork. She returned to France and lived for almost another twenty years, dying in 1963.

It still amazes me as I reread her words on machines that she could have been so lucid about such a subject in the middle of such horror.  Having never worked with machines, I would have thought she would have hated them. Yet, she found something positive in them even under the worst of circumstances. I stand in awe. I would love to have met her.

You can get the book on Amazon. There is also a Kindle edition.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Three stories of ten-floor building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place were burned yesterday, and while the fire was going on 141 young men and women -- at least 125 of them mere girls -- were burned to death or killed by jumping to the pavement below.

The building was fireproof. It shows now hardly any signs of the disaster that overtook it. The walls are as good as ever; so are the floors; nothing is the worse for the fire except the furniture and 141 of the 600 men and girls that were employed in its upper three stories.

Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavements below.    New York Times, March 26, 1911.

I had missed the recent American Experience film on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire but I was able to view it on the PBS Video website.  I highly recommend spending an hour watching it.  This program seems to be all the more pertinent to me as I continue to read about the daily struggles of unionized government workers in many states - starting with Wisconsin. They are, of course,  not fighting for safer working conditions but they are trying to hold onto long-fought-for collective bargaining rights.  The bitter irony of the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company is that even though they had led a strike by New York City garment workers in 1909 for union representation, they never achieved it for themselves.  The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, would simply not permit any "meddling" in their control of the business.  Harris and Blanck were later tried and acquitted of manslaughter charges connected to the fire.  They went on to collect a lucrative insurance settlement and continued in the garment business. They were fined repeatedly for operating their factories under unsafe working conditions.

Asch Building in New York where fire occurred
on second to top floor still stands today.
Photo from Wikipedia.

Society benefits greatly from technology.  More often than not, that technology is made available through companies which compete fiercely against each other in the marketplace. The argument that nothing should fetter the owners of a business with regulatory burdens that might make them less competitive simply cannot be supported in the face of the tragic consequences that can so easily befall their employees.  Reasonable regulations and collective bargaining are not evils. They are part of the cost of doing business in a complex society. It is always a balance.  What should be regulated and what should be left to the market?  What voice should workers have compared to owners or managers?  While there is no lasting answer to these questions, it seems that we are once again tilting towards excessive power - and excessive rewards - on the side of owners and managers.

Women in the White City

I was researching a story when I came across a fascinating entry related to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. The Exposition was held in Chicago to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America. This is one of those events that I wish I had been around to see in person. I would have gladly joined the 28 million other visitors who came to the Exposition during its six-month run from May to October of 1893. The Exposition was a World's Fair that was meant to celebrate the achievements of mankind since the days of Columbus. It was called The White City because of the white marble-like facade of its so-called Great Buildings. At over 600 acres, the Exposition was larger than Disney World's Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Epcot combined.


The Great Buildings were designed by a Who's Who of the best male architects in America. All of the buildings, that is, but one. Everything about the Women's Building was left to the Board of Lady Managers who planned, built, and selected all of the exhibitions. Because there were so few women architects at the time, the Board held a competition to identify a woman architect to design the building.

Sophia Hayden (later Bennett), the first female architect to graduate from MIT (in 1890), won the honor. She was 23 years old at the time. She designed a graceful Italian Renaissance villa which was very reminiscent of her thesis project at MIT.

When she won the award in 1891, she was employed as a drawing teacher in the Boston schools because no architectural firm would hire a woman. She was paid approximately a thousand dollars for her design, one tenth the fee paid to male architects.

Her design was hailed for its fine lines but it was also assailed as being obviously the work of a woman. Despite her success with the Women's Building, she retired from architecture following the Exposition as she still could not find suitable employment. She married and lived a quiet life in Massachusetts, dying in 1953.



The Women's Building was instrumental in advancing women's rights on many fronts including women's suffrage. All of the exhibits were deliberately designed by the Board to be non-competitive, although women did compete with men working in their fields in other buildings at the Exposition. The Women's Building was filled with examples of women's work in every field imaginable, selected from submissions from all over the globe. It was certainly the most graphic example up until that time of women capably matching every aspect of the achievements of their male counterparts.

I wonder what might have become of Sophia Hayden had she been recognized as she surely deserved? Times are somewhat better today for women but there is still much more room for women to gain equality with men.

Postscript: The Women's Building, like virtually all of the buildings at the Exposition, was torn down shortly after closing day. The only building to remain in its original location is the Palace of Fine Arts which is now the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.