The People's Cube - Political Satire

The Korean Nine-Person Shovel

Westerners traveling to Korea in the late nineteenth century were puzzled by this shovel, which they frequently saw in use on Korean farms. It required between five or nine people to operate, but it seemed to shovel dirt no faster or better than a western-style, one-person shovel. Perhaps the nine-person shovel had some other virtue that wasn't readily apparent.

Pictures found here and here. Text from The Korean Respository (1896).

THE KOREAN POWER SHOVEL - This interesting invention occupies a front rank among the labor-saving machines of Korea, for it saves from three to five men a vast deal of work. It consists of a long wooden shovel armed with an iron shoe to cut into the earth properly. The handle is about five feet long and is worked (to a certain extent) by the captain of the crew. The ropes, one on each side are attached to the bowl of the shovel, and these are managed by the men who seek to save their labor.

When in operation the captain inserts the iron shod point of the shovel as deep into the earth sometimes as three inches, and then the crew of two or four men give a lusty pull and a shout and away will go a tablespoonful of dirt fully six feet, if not more into the distance. This operation is repeated three or four times and then the weary crew take a recess and refresh themselves with a pipe. It is a beautiful sight to watch a crew working these power shovels, everything is executed with such clocklike regularity, especially the recess. Then the crew sometimes sing in a minor strain, for the Korean day laborer can always be depended on, when putting in time, to do it in as pleasant a manner as possible.

That this implement belongs to the class called labor-saving machines there can be no doubt. It takes five men to do one man's work, but entails no reduction in pay. In fact, the number of its crew can be extended to the limits of the shovel's ropes without risk of a strike among the laborers.

• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act redirects a few billion to make this perfectly collectivist tool.
  
• That creates nine times more shovel-ready union jobs in the US.
  
• Unemployment is history, along with our dependency on foreign fossil fuels.
  
• Obama keeps his presidency and continues to progressivize this country even further.

At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don't understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”