improved quality and quantity of work obtained by confining each worker
to a narrow range of activity. If no great inventions in machinery took
place, we might therefore expect a constant narrowing of the activity of
each worker, which would make his work constantly more simple, and more
monotonous, and himself more and more dependent on the regular co-
operation of an increasing number of other persons over whom he had no
direct control. Without the growth of modern machinery, mere subdivision
of labour would constantly make for the slavery and the intellectual
degradation of labour. Independently of the mighty and ever-new
applications of mechanical forces, this process of subdivision or
specialization would take place, though at a slower pace. How far does
machinery degrade, demoralize, dementalize the worker?

The constantly growing specialization of machinery is the most striking
industrial phenomenon of modern times. Since the worker is more and more
the attendant of machinery, does not this mean a corresponding
specialization of the worker? It would seem so at first sight, yet if we
look closer it becomes less obvious. So far as mere manual activity is
concerned, it seems probable that the general effect of machinery has
been both to narrow the range of that activity, and to take over that
dexterity which consisted in the incessant repetition of a single
uniform process. Very delicately specialized manipulation is precisely
the work it pays best to do by machinery, so that, as Professor Marshall
says, "machinery can make uniform actions more accurately and
effectively than man can; and most of the work which was done by those
who were specially skilful with the fingers a few generations ago, is
now done by machinery."[15] He illustrates from the wood and metal
industries, where the process is constantly going on.

"The chief difficulty to be overcome is that of getting the machinery to