ABSTRACT
Now there are general related tendencies in modern industry which are powerful obstacles to this realisation of the social meaning of industry.
The first is the growing subdivision of labour with the related expansion of markets. When a man made a watch or a pair of shoes and sold them to a neighbour, or known customer, his work had for him a distinct human significance. For, making the whole of a thing, he realised its nature and utility, while, seeing the man who wore his watch or shoes, he realised the human value of his work. Now he performs one of some ninety processes which go to make many watches, or he trims the heels of innumerable shoes. The other processes he cannot do, and does not accurately know how they are done. His separate contribution has no clear utility, and yet it solely occupies his attention. Not only does he thus lose grasp of the meaning of his work, but he has no opportunity of realising its consumptive utility. For he cannot know or care anything about the unknown person in some distant part of the world who shall wear the boots or watch he helped to make. The social sympathy of coöperative industry is thus atrophied by the conditions of his work. Division of labour, in its first intent, thus divides each worker into a section of a producer, and separates each set of producers from the consumers of their products.
