My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

54 MY LIFEword of censure, for the many petty offences orinfractions of rules that are inevitable inevery largeestablishment. Owen calls it " the silent monitor,"but the workers called it the "telegraph." Eachsuperintendent of a department had a character-book,in which the daily conduct of every worker was setdown by marks for each of the ordinary offences,neglect of work, swearing, etc., which when summedup gave a result in four degrees—bad, indifferent,good, excellent. For every individual there wasa small wooden, four-sided tally, the sides beingcoloured black, blue, yellow, and white, correspondingto the above degrees of conduct. This tally was fixedat each one's work-place, with the indicative colouronly visible, so that as Owen or his representativepassed down the shops at any time during the day,he could note at a glance the conduct of eachone during the preceding day, and thus get botha general and a detailed view of the behaviour ofthe workers. If any thought they were unfairlytreated they could complain to him, but in hardlyany cases did this happen. He tells us, "As Ipassed through all the rooms, the workers alwaysobserved me look at these telegraphs, and whenblack I merely looked at the person, and then atthe colour, but never said a word to one of themby way of blame. At first," he says, "a large proportiondaily were black and blue, few yellow, andscarcely any white. Gradually the blacks were changedfor blue, the blues for yellow, and the yellows for white.Soon after the adoption of this telegraph I could atonce see by the expression of countenance what wasthe colour which was shown. As there were fourcolours there were four different expressions of countenance,most evident to me as I passed along the rooms.