32 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



Wideninff of Opportunities for EmpJoyment. From what has been said as 

 to the quick change which may be made by the individual from one trade to 

 another, it will naturally follow that the opportunities for employment by 

 industrial workers have been very markedly widened through the instru- 

 mentality of the automatic tool. Not only this, but the worker need not be 

 continuously an industrial worker. He may vary his employment in a great 

 variety of ways. Thus, he may be a factory worker, an agricultural worker, 

 or a worker in any sort of manual occupation, and he may change from one to 

 the other at exceedingly short notice — so short, indeed, that he does not con- 

 sciously notice an interruption in the continuity of his activity. 



Narrowing of Trade Interest Causes Economic Unrest. Of course, from 

 the preceding analysis, it will be evident that the trade interest of the indi- 

 vidual worker has been narrowed practically to the point of extinction. He 

 is no longer a moulder, a machinist, a brass worker, etc., he is simply an 

 industrial worker. His work, therefore, has become depersonalized and solely 

 an economic activity and as such cannot provide him with an outlet for 

 any possible idealism. Whatever his ideals may be, and no man, however 

 poor, can exist or does exist without ideals in some form or another, none- 

 theless, as distinct from the old trade worker, the modern industrial worker 

 must find an outlet for his idealism outside of the daily work in which he is 

 engaged. But inasmuch as this daily work practically taxes his physical 

 energy to the point of absorbing all of it, the ideals which he may espouse are 

 most likely to be in a direction of reaction against his daily employment. 

 This, of course, makes a fertile seedbed for revolutionary economic doctrine. 



Concentration of Skill. I have previously indicated that the advent of the 

 automatic tool did not destroy the necessity for some craftsmanship. What it 

 has done in reality has been to create two distinct groups in indusry. On the 

 one hand are a very large group of unskilled industrial workers engaged in 

 actual production of commodities and on the other hand are a relatively small 

 group of highly skilled craftsmen through whose efforts the larger group func- 

 tions. These craftsmen, of course, under the new conditions, require a very 

 much higher knowledge than was necessary in industry prior to the coming of 

 this separation. The early apprenticeships would be entirely inadequate for a 

 sufficient training for most of them. So we find the higher of this training 

 now given in our various schools of Applied Science, such as the Engineering 

 Departments of our universities. The needs of its lower levels are met by 

 the technical high schools and, to a large extent, in the industries themselves. 

 It is the latter of this trained group that at present really supports the mem- 

 bership of the old time trade unions. Nonetheless, the separation of the 

 workers into these two main groups and the resultant change in the outlook 

 on life must be regarded as having a social significance of the first magnitude. 



Equalization of Labor Reward. Under the conditions of interchangeable 



