“It is further given out that the machine robs man of his industrial initiative; that the complicated and specialized machine decreases his mental alertness.  In addition to his skill and his appreciation of his product, the workman has ever prized the appeal his labor has made to his individual intelligence.  His work has brought thinking power with it.  His day’s task has included the excitement of invention and adventure.  In the heat and burden of the week has come that thrilling moment when his mind has discovered the fact that a variation in method means a simplification of his task.  Or, in the monotonous on-going of his labor, he has suddenly realized that by sheer brain power he has accomplished a third more work than his neighbor.  He has counted such results compliments to his initiative, to his thinking power.  They have brought a reward three times more satisfying than a mere increase in wage, for, in his eyes, they have been substantial testimonies to the freedom of his mind, something which every reasonable person puts higher than any king’s ransom.  But the coming of the machine deadens the workman’s inclination toward inventive adventure.

“So the multitude of men and women stand before the cunning machinery of industry, in the pose of helplessness before a mechanical finality.  They cannot help feeling that in so far as their special task is involved, the machine has said the last word.  The challenge dies out of their work.  The brain that has ever been on the quiver of adventurous expectancy relaxes its tension, and the workman moodily or indifferently lets his machine do its perfect work, while his undisciplined, unchallenged thoughts wander freely over external, social, or domestic concerns.  It may give an indolent, unambitious, selfish type of employee a certain amount of satisfaction to know that the machine frees his mind of initiative, but to the considerate workman it is a day of tragedy when his brain power receives no challenge from his work, and that day has dawned in the minds of millions of men who throng our industries.

“So, then, when this machine-robber, without heart or conscience, makes of little repute the workman’s most shining glory—­skill; steals rudely from him the esthetic pleasure in his product, and leaves him mentally crippled before his work, how little force has that honored appeal, ’The dignity of labor’!  Talk as we will, in this machine-ridden time, the ’dignity of labor’ is but a skeleton of its former robust self.  Take away the king’s throne, the courtier’s carpet, the royal prerogative, and then speak about ‘The Divine Right’!  All that ‘dignity of labor’ can mean in these days is simply that it is more dignified for a man to earn a wage than it is to be a doorway loafer.  The workingman’s throne—­skill—­has gone.  His prerogative—­skill—­has been taken away.  The items that have formerly given dignity to labor have been largely displaced, so far as we have adventured, by the machine, and the future holds out no other hope than this, that machines shall more and more increase.  There is little ‘dignity’ in a task that a man does which may be equally well done by his fourteen-year-old boy or girl.  There is little ‘dignity’ in a task which less and less depends upon independent knowledge.”