November 13, 1911. 14:00 PM.
Putilov Foundry Plant, Saint Petersburg.
Vasily wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a black trail of graphite and grease. At forty years old, his lungs sounded like broken bellows when breathing, a reminder of twenty years inhaling silica dust and coal smoke. He had seen the Putilov factory at its worst moments: the massive strikes of 1905, the hunger that ate your stomach from inside, and the Cossacks' sabers charging against his friends in red-stained snow.
But today, the factory was different from what was yearned for a few years ago.
"Vasily!" a young lathe operator shouted from the corridor, a boy named Pyotr who had more political enthusiasm than skill in his hands. "This is madness! The new quality control foreman, that German they brought in, has rejected thirty consecutive axles. He says they're 'out of tolerance.' They used to be good enough!"
Vasily left his black bread and bacon sandwich on a newspaper sheet and looked at the rejected pieces. They were carbon steel axles. To the naked eye, they seemed straight. Two years ago, they would have ended up in a freight locomotive and nobody would have said anything until they broke five years later.
"Before we made samovars and rails for slow trains, Pyotr," Vasily said, chewing slowly. "Now we make engines, and those engines spin faster than your tongue."
"It's exploitation!" the boy complained, pulling a crumpled pamphlet from his back pocket. "They demand Swiss watchmaker precision from us with workers' wages. The Revolutionary Committee says we should stop. That this 'micron' thing is a bourgeois tactic to deny us production bonuses."
Vasily sighed. He took the pamphlet and used it to wipe an oil stain on his bench.
"The Committee says many things," Vasily responded, pointing with his chin toward the new cafeteria, a clean brick building with electric ventilation. "But the Committee didn't put meat in yesterday's soup. And the Committee didn't install mesh guards on the transmission belts so they won't rip your arm off like what happened to old Sergei."
Vasily looked around. The factory had changed, it had powerful electric light instead of flickering gas lamps. The floor was swept twice a day, and most importantly: the yellow envelope with weekly pay.
Since Neva Technical Solutions had taken control of the engine section, wages had doubled for skilled workers. They included a 'precision bonus.' Vasily had bought new shoes for his three children last week. Leather shoes, not tow ones that wore out easily.
"But, Uncle Vasily..." Pyotr insisted. "You can't work like this. They measure with that... thing."
Pyotr pointed to the tool resting on the inspection bench.
It was a Palmer micrometer. A steel arc with a fine-pitch screw. For Pyotr and the young radicals, it was an instrument of torture and regression to the gaze of Western scientists. For Vasily, it was the future, for from these he was learning to create increasingly perfect tools.
"That thing," Vasily said, standing up and taking the micrometer with his calloused hands, "...is what separates a village blacksmith from an imperial technician. If you learn to read it, Pyotr, they'll pay you three rubles more per week."
"I don't want to learn to measure, I want justice."
Vasily approached the boy. His patience had run out. The justice of 1905 had cost him two teeth and six months of hunger, while the "exploitation" of 1911 was feeding his family.
"Listen, boy," Vasily said in a low but dangerous voice, invading the young agitator's personal space. "My children go to the technical school the company opened, they can eat three times a day. If you want to make revolution, do it in your free time, at the tavern or in the square. But on my shift, on my assembly line, you're gonna learn to use that damn micrometer until your axles come out perfect."
"Or what?" Pyotr challenged. "Will you denounce me as a socialist?"
"No. I'll break your head myself with this wrench before the guards arrive," Vasily promised. "Because if you make garbage, engines fail, and if engines fail, he takes the contract elsewhere. And if they leave, we go back to eating watery porridge."
Vasily put the micrometer against the boy's chest.
"Zero Tolerance... Learn it. Or go load sacks at the port."
Vasily returned to his lathe and adjusted the piece. He breathed deeply the air; it was difficult, a recurring headache.