Science in Public Affairs 



All industrial arts may be brought under the two 

 heads of repetition and invention, and the part 

 played by the sciences in these two sorts of activity 

 deserves separate consideration. 



The overwhelming majority of human activities 

 in industry have always been directed to repetition, 

 a multitudinous iteration of the same act directed 

 to the production of an article precisely like the 

 one last produced. Since nature never repeats 

 herself exactly, the material to which labour is 

 applied, and the conditions under which it is 

 applied, are never so completely uniform as to 

 permit imitation to be absolute ; some choice, dis- 

 cretion and intelligent direction is thus involved 

 even in the most monotonous act of industry. 

 What happens when a process is taken over from 

 a handicraft by a machine is evidently this : the 

 labour of the machine-tender is more exactly re- 

 petitive than was that of the handicraftsman, a 

 portion of the skill, discretion, &c., being handed 

 over to a group of engineers and overseers, re- 

 sponsible for the regular and economical working 

 of the machinery. In the routine conduct of a 

 great modern manufacture, e.g. a rolling-mill, a 

 dye-works, a chemical factory, we can distinguish 

 directly associated with the productive operations 

 three sorts of workers. First come the engineers, 

 chemists, and others, whose business it is to test and 

 regulate materials, machinery power and products ; 

 secondly, the machine-tenders ; thirdly, the rough 

 or " unskilled " manual labour of carrying, sorting, 

 packing, &c., which it does not yet pay to do by 



