877] Machinery and Labor 79 



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 conditions 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 re- 

 peated its essential features over and over and made 

 the doing of the task a habit, to be done, when occa- 

 sion demands, with little or no thought concerning the 

 manner of the doing. The every day business of dress- 

 ing ourselves, or of walking, would involve an enor- 

 mous 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 mouths 

 and of chewing it, always in the same old way, would 

 become unbearable if routine were of itself a thing 

 detrimental to the well-being of persons and always to 

 be avoided. 



It is to be noted also, that routine work is not con- 

 fined to those employments which require the use of 

 machine power. As a matter of fact, machines can be 

 used to advantage only when the thing to be done by 

 the machine is routine work. The tendency is, 



" ! 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. : in Chicago Record- 

 Herald of May 3, 1903. 



