Waukesha High School - Megaphone Yearbook (Waukesha, WI)

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To Our F0rqfatlu'1's- The Europcun Immigrants

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The following table serves as a rough indication of certain of the old skills which the machine displaced in part and the new skills which the machine has created. On the assumption that Rabinowitz is correct, and that there has been no net decline in handicrafts, is there any doubt that the workers of the Power Age are, in the aggregate, more skilled, if more specialized, than the artisans of any previous culture? The old hand skills: Spinning Smithing Stone-working Glass-blowing Weaving Vvfood-working Pottery-making The household arts Ship-building Printing The new Power Age skills: Engine driving Production pre-planning Airplane-making Track inspecting Sanitary engineering Flying Chauffeuring Medical. dental and surgical Modern navigating Garage work work Modern tool-making Steel construction work Machine printing work Accounting Electric power servicing Radio engineering Stenographic work Telephone and telegraph work Laboratory research Camera and motion picture Prospecting and drilling work Caisson work Barbering and hair-dressing Publicity work The list of modern skills could be indefinitely extended, utterly overwhelm- ing in volume and variety the skills which have declined. The principle often touched upon earlier applies here and with equal force. When the machine X , VN Page One Hundred Five controls the man, his skill evaporates: when he guides or controls the machine-as in many of these new occupa- tions-his skill remains, and may even be enhanced. There is one department where it seems to me that skill has been lost with no offsetting compensation. We have taken many of the housewife's tasks into the factory and left her to gossip, rCour1esy of Jose Gorostiza. Secretary of Public Education. Mexico Crityj The same moody power of Orozco and the same powerful rhythm are evident in this mural. Both Orozco and Diego Rivera glorify labour: they are the Soviets of Modern Art. This mural is one of the group in the National Preparatory School, Mexico City.

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play bridge. buy more clothes than she needs, and make a sad spectacle of herself at so-called culture clubs. The poor woman has been left high and dry, after the children are big enough to dress and care for themselves-and there are not as many to dress as there used to be. The problem of the restless, neurotic middle- class woman is based on the fact that the machine has stripped her of her ancient skills. leaving nothing but boredom in their place. Nature has ever abhorred a vacuum. For those gainfully employed there has obviously been no decline in skill. The robot class is relatively far smaller than that of the old-time slave or serf. The modern farmer must know more than his ancestors, and much of his knowlf edge is enforced by the new machines-the tractors and the harvesters-he is called upon to operate. The psychological effects of these new skills are a more dubious matter. As Simon Patten has pointed out in his theory of product and climax, the old artisan saw the product of his skill culminating immediately before his eyes. Satisfaction came as he worked. The modern designer may not see the tangible product of his labour for months: indeed may never see it. Similarly much specialized work of the highest skill is only one tiny part of a great process, and often the worker has no picture of the whole process, or where his task fits into it. The machine has thus operated to split the psychological unity of work and result, and to take away a greater or lesser amount of the craftsman's completed satisfaction. On this score the gloomy prophets have a case, but it needs far more investigation before we can know how serious it is. The foregoing article is printed by special permission of the author and of the Macmillan Company, Publishers. -X 1 3 Page One Hundred Six