Steam hissed and iron gears spun and clanked in a mad, endless race. The constant clicking and clacking of the shuttles as they raced back and forth across the colorful thread played a counterpoint.

Finally, desperate for relief from the constant demands of the giant automaton he attended, the sweaty worker pulled a sturdy wooden shoe--a sabot--off his foot. When he jammed it into the whirling gears of a steam-powered loom two centuries ago and brought it to a shrieking, grinding halt, a new profession--"saboteur"--was born into the world.

To minister to the needs of the newfangled spinning machines, blast furnaces, and other industrial devices, people were drawn or driven to take jobs in grimy manufacturing centers such as Birmingham, England and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Most of them came straight off the farm, but they came in the thousands and tens of thousands. Over time, they numbered in the millions.

With Henry Ford's production line, human beings became part of the machine itself. For years, automation helped people become ever more productive.

In 1890, a hundred years or so after the start of the Industrial Revolution, the work week was 60 hours. During the first half of this century, the length of time per week we spent "workin' for the man" gradually drifted downwards. In 1914, it was 51.5 hours. In 1930, 43.9; in 1940, 38.6.1950, 40.5; 1975, 39.4; 1990, 40.8.

In 1994, the average workweek had begun to climb again, to 42 hours. For those on the fast track, the average work week skyrocketed to 49 hours.

Of course, these were the official hours. Time spent at home working on projects or reports, or updating information, often isn't counted. (Neither is women's work. They work, on average, 80+ hours per week.)

Ironically, the computer--the very machine that makes jobs easier (sometimes so easy those jobs disappear)--also makes it easier to work longer and harder.

The computer--the utopian stuff of science-fiction and advertising copy writer's dreams--has become a worse taskmaster than the steam-powered loom ever was. At least you could leave that marvel at the factory. The computer, and the work it can do, awaits you in the office, the living room, the cabin.

So why are we working so many hours? The sad reason for this most recent change in American work habits appears to be fear. We work hard to curry favor, so that when the ax falls, as it does increasingly, its sharp cutting edge of technology takes the person at the next desk, in the next cubicle.

In effect, we use automation to defeat automation.

Oh, the politicians and flacks have coined many different words for the results of automation: downsizing, mergers, rightsizing, delayering, consolidating, realsizing, restructuring, deselecting, reshaping, redeploying, and more.

It still results in one thing: According to the New York Times (March 3, 1996), one out of every three households has had a family member laid off since 1979.

Businesses automate because it's cheaper to buy hardware than to deal with human beings. Machines don't tire, they don't need time off, they don't get sick or ask for benefits, and they don't strike. After a certain period of time, they're paid for.

In a chilling vision of the future, Norbert Weiner, considered the father of cybernetics, wrote in the 1950s, "...the automatic machine...is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor."

Boards of directors and stockholders reward managers who cut costs and raise dividends. The same wonderful folks who turned the Steel Belt into the Rust Belt by not buying improved foundry equipment are now the ones who say, "We don't need middle managers any more. The computer can accomplish a lot of the same tasks they once did. With this information gathered this fast, lower-level employees can make decisions."

As a result, one expert foresees 80 percent of those in middle management are "susceptible to elimination." How bad is the overall picture? An estimate is that 90 out of 124 million jobs in this country are subject to elimination in the near future.

To add insult to injury, companies use pension funds to automate, and cut down on jobs for future generations. Plants are moved to the suburbs to forestall unions. For this and other reasons, labor unions have waned, from 35% of the population in 1955 to 16% in 1991.

You can see jobs disappear everywhere, like puddles in the desert. Whenís the last time you saw a typesetter or keyliner in a publication? In retail and wholesale establishments, bar codes and laser scanners have displaced thousands of inventory people, pricers, and clerks. Who needs a purchasing agent when a program signals a clerk to reorder? In the blue collar world, Chrysler installed a $225 million assembly operation for a new truck line recently--but only added 70 jobs.

Production of goods has always been a place where this country was strong. No longer. Oh, the number of people who do that grew from 20 to 23 million, 1960-91. The percentage, however, declined from 37% to 17%. Service industries, of course, boomed from 27 million in 1950 to 85+ million in 1991, but most of the new openings were in no-skill, low-paying occupations such as custodians, maids, and fast-food clerks.

As a nation, we don't produce things any more. We shuffle paper. We "securitize" mortgages. We sell "futures." (It's rather like the cashiers who weighed out gold dust for the miners. Each time they'd grab a pinch of dust to weigh it, some would lodge under their long fingernails. Every so often, the cashier would clean his nails into a can under the table.)

More than 75% of us are employed in white collar jobs today. Accounting, banking, wholesale and retail, legal services, education, health care, and other fields.

We're not employed full-time at those jobs, either. To save on benefits, businesses hire up to 60% temporary workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 29 per cent of the total labor force, or 35 million, are temps. What is a temp but a replaceable part? When the computer can be programmed to make many decisions, experience isn't necessary, and "expert systems" soon replace experts.

Some would like to blame foreign labor for the problems, but the truth is, automation is being used in foreign factories as well as U.S.concerns. After all, a machine can replace a Thai or East German as well as an American. And supranational businesses--firms that operate across national borders--have loyalty only to a profit.

Even that normally upbeat guide to finding the perfect job, "The 1997 What Color Is Your Parachute" quotes Dickens with the lament "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"Best for the many corporations and other organizations now recording record profits."

"Worst for the workers who have no job security anymore, because life-long jobs are almost unheard of, and, nobody's job is safe."

"That's what is different about the `90s."

How do Americans that are still employed compensate? Well, some take a second--or even a third--job.

Some go back to school to retrain themselves. Many take work home, trying to accomplish as much as possible, just to survive.

The computer, that wonderful labor-saving device that pundits promised would set people free to learn and enjoy life, has become an instrument of labor. The hammer and sickle has been replaced by the PC, and the result for too many of us is idleness rather than leisure.

Ironically, a growing number of Americans who do still have jobs are concerned about their lack of time, period. A Robert Half International survey in 1989 asked whether respondents would trade salary for time off, and 13 percent said they would.

Last year, 21 percent--one in five--were willing, just to have more time at home. Today's tired employee does the work of 1.3 people, versus 1985. The U.S. Department of Labor discovered the average U.S. worker would give up 4.7 percent of their earnings, just to have more free time.

The Industrial Revolution is over. The machines won.

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