FARM MACHINERY 89 



With reference to the workers themselves, we may safely say 

 that men who have worked for years with machinery are, on the 

 average, quite as strong and healthy, and at least as intelligent, 

 as were men employed in the same industries before machine 

 power was introduced. They certainly compare most favorably, 

 too, with the average workman among those who now have little 

 or nothing to do with machinery. 



That routine work, which is persisted in and made one's prin- 

 cipal occupation long after the worker has fully mastered it and 

 developed his efficiency in that line to the limit of his capacity, 

 tends to narrow the intellectual field of the worker and to depress 

 his spirit may be freely admitted. The human mind is continu- 

 ally opening to new wants and seeking the means of satisfying 

 them. 1 In proportion, therefore, as the ambition of the individual 

 worker and his capacity for accomplishing new and greater tasks 

 prompt him to advance in any line of activities, just so will he 

 tend to become despondent and dissatisfied and wearied with too 

 long continuance in any routine employment. Under such condi- 

 tions the health of the strongest worker must eventually give way. 



It is to be noticed, however, that a certain amount of routine 

 is good for a person. No one ever acquires any high degree of 

 skill or proficiency in any line of work until he has thoughtfully 

 and systematically repeated its essential features over and over 

 and made the doing of the task a habit to be done, when 

 occasion demands, with little or no thought concerning the man- 

 ner of the doing. The everyday business of dressing ourselves, 

 or of walking, would involve an enormous waste of time and 

 patience if we were compelled to learn anew each day ; and the 

 still more common routine employment of carrying food to our 



stattgefunden, sondern auch selbst in solchen Gewerben, in welchen die Maschi- 

 nenanwendung zugenommen hat, ist die Zahl der Arbeiter oft weit grosser 

 geworden. F. G. Schulze, " Nationalokonomie," Leipzig, 1856, p. 44 (quoted 

 by Franz Bensing in " Der Einfluss der landwirtschaftlichen Maschinen," p. 5) 



1 It is absurd to say that human beings can produce too much of everything 

 needed for the satisfaction of human desire, since the satisfaction of one desire 

 but awakens a new and wider desire, and there can be no end to the demands, 

 the cravings, the yearnings of the being we call man. Henry George, Jr., 

 Chicago Record-Herald, May 3, 1903 



