As it now stands, the association is one of
individuals, with the impulse for association and for creative effort
left out. The interests of some ninety workers associated together in
the making of a shoe are not common but antagonistic, except as they
are common in their antagonism to the owner of the shoe on which they
work. They hang together because they must; their parting is the best
part of a working day.
And yet the practice of dividing up the fabrication of an article
among the members of a group instead of confining the making of it
to one or two people, opens up the possibility of extensive social
intercourse, and has the power, we may discover, to sublimate the
inordinate desire for the intensive satisfaction of personal life.
Although the division of labor has given us a society which is
abortive in its functioning like a machine with half assembled parts,
it offers us the mechanics for interdependence and the opportunity to
work out a cooerdinated industrial life.
CHAPTER II
ADAPTING PEOPLE TO INDUSTRY--THE AMERICAN WAY
As machine power rivalled hand work, promoters of industry until
recently relied for its advancement on the perfection of technology,
giving little thought to the perfection of labor. It was confidently
assumed that labor, out of its own necessities, would adapt itself
automatically to the new requirements of the machine, and to the
shifts of business interest.
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