Sec. 4.  Effect of Machinery upon the Character of Labour.  Next, what is the general effect of machinery upon the character of the work done?  The economic gain attending all division of labour is of course based on the 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 hold the material firmly in exactly the position in which the machine-tool can be brought to bear on it in the right way, and without wasting meanwhile too much time in taking grip of it.  But this can generally be contrived when it is worth while to spend some labour and expense on it; and then the whole operations can often be controlled by a worker, who, sitting before the machine, takes with the left hand a piece of wood or metal from a heap, and puts it in a socket, while with the right he draws down a lever, or in some other way sets the machine-tool at work, and finally with his left hand throws on to another heap the material which has been cut, or punched, or drilled, or planed exactly after a given pattern.”