ABSTRACT
Looked at broadly, is the average work of a laborer in a machine industry less dignified, less agreeable, less humanizing than it was before the industry reached the machine stage? From the nature of the question, it is dangerous to dogmatize because neither the affirmative nor the negative is capable of being demonstrated. The negative view seems to rest mainly upon the assumption that it is more dignified to be occupied with a great many purely mechanical operations than with a very few. The oldfashioned shoemaker, for example, was largely occupied with purely mechanical operations, most of them of a very elementary nature, such as a machine can do quite as well as a man. Each of these operations required great concentration of attention, leaving him very little opportunity for other forms of mental activity. He was the slave of each particular task as truly as a modern machine worker can be said to be the slave of his single task. But the old-fashioned shoemaker had to turn from one kind of work
to another. This increased the difficulty, and, on the whole, required of him a greater amount of concentration than is now required of the operator of a machine. The latter, who has but one routine task to learn, learns it easily, and can carry it out without very intense concentration of mind. His mind, therefore, would seem to be freer than that of the old hand worker, though there was more variety to the work of the latter. Whether this greater variety is to his advantage or disadvantage would be difficult to determine off-hand. It looks as though the operator of a machine in a shoe factory, being relieved of the necessity of acquiring several forms of specialized manual dexterity, would be in a better position for free mental activity than the old-fashioned shoemaker.
