JF Ptak Science Books
[Source; http://www.ndl.go.jp/exposition/e/data/L/158-002l.html]
This is another in an uncertain series on Found Poetry (a cousin to the Found Book Art series), with this fragment found in the history of technology/labor relations category. IT seems that in the early and problematic history of the remarkable Eiffel Tower, M. Gustave Eiffel had a few problems with his workers constructing the tower. Soon after a three-day negotiating session ending the strike of September 19, 1888 (in which workers asked for a four-cent per hour pay increase and where Eiffel slowly met their demands but parsing the raise out one center per month for four months) there was another attempt at a strike, just before Christmas of the same year. One of the demands floated by Eiffel et Cie was that the workers engaged in the construction at greater heights should receive a higher pay, what with the rain and wind and the possibility of a fatal trip-and-fall. Eiffel responded with the following efficient answer, set here to some sort of metre:
The professional risks remained
the same
whether a man fell from 40 meters
or from 300 meters,
the results were the same--
certain death.1
This was a winning argument, and kept his workers working without compensation for working at a higher height, and the tower's completion on schedule.
Notes:
1. Eiffel's Tower, by Jill Jones, Penguin, 2009, pg 49.
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