178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
THE DANGER OF UNSKILL 
By WALTER G. BEACH 
STATE COLLEGE OF WASHINGTON, PULLMAN, WASH. 
gia human streams pour ceaselessly into the sea of American 
industry. One of these brings to us the immigrant, the man 
of foreign stock, alien in blood and customs, and more and more from 
the backward and “beaten” peoples of eastern Europe. The sources 
of the other stream are in our own life, and upon it are borne America’s 
own children who, in the passing of years, are to face the duties of 
manhood and womanhood. These two streams fill the vast national 
reservoir of labor upon which depends in large measure the future of 
American industry and American moral welfare. This is the first fact 
to which attention is directed. 
The second fact is the changing character of industry, aside from its 
human element. We are in the midst of the great mechanical revolu- 
tion whose beginning in America goes back to the early years of the 
nineteenth century, but which since the civil war has been uprooting 
the old order, supplanting its simpler methods with marvelous rapidity 
and tremendous power. 
The human consequence of this revolution is the driving out of the 
man by the machine, on the one hand, and the increasing specialization 
of labor on the other. And the labor supplanted by the machine, if it 
is to fit into the resulting more specialized employments, must have 
skill. Primitive man was unspecialized and his skill was of the 
slightest, his knowledge being insignificant. The man of to-day finds 
that sheer muscle is at a discount, and his weaker but better trained 
fellow passes him in the race. It is not meant that there is not a great 
demand for unskilled labor, but the unskilled laborer works under a 
constantly growing handicap. 
In our earlier national history, it was possible for us to rely for 
prosperity upon the resources of nature. Force of body and character 
sufficient to brave the hardships of a raw and untrained world, and to 
pluck from nature the bounties which she furnished in abundance, was 
the quality most essential. Hach man or family was a unit in produc- 
tion ; cooperation or combination on any extended scale involving train- 
ing, was not found or needed. Individualism and the overthrow of 
nature, and her exploitation, were the important features of our national 
life which assured success; and it was just these qualities of endurance, 
courage, force, assertiveness, aided by sheer muscle, which the selective 
