HKB
it arouses no interest, and has nothing in it to quicken or brighten the intelligence, though it may sharpen the sight and stimulate muscular activity in some one limited direction."[219]
The work of machine-tending is never of course absolutely automatic or without spontaneity and skill. To a certain limited extent the "tender" of machinery rules as well as serves the machine; in seeing that his portion of the machine works in accurate adjustment to the rest, the qualities of care, judgment, and responsibility are evolved. For a customary skill of wrist and eye which speedily hardens into an instinct, is often substituted a series of adjustments requiring accurate quantitative measurement and conscious reference to exact standards. In such industries as those of watchmaking the factory worker, though upon the average his work requires less manual dexterity than the handworker in the older method, may get more intellectual exercise in the course of his work. But though economists have paid much attention to this industry, in considering the character of machine-tending it is not an average example for a comparison of machine labour and hand labour; for the extreme delicacy of many of the operations even under machinery, the responsibility attaching to the manipulation of expensive material, and the minute adjustment of the numerous small parts, enable the worker in a watch factory to get more interest and more mental training out of his work than falls to the ordinary worker in a textile or metal factory. Wherever the material is of a very delicate nature and the processes involve some close study of the individual qualities of each piece of material, as is the case with the more valuable metals, with some forms of pottery, with silk or lace, elements of thought and skill survive and may be even fostered under machine industry. A great part of modern inventiveness, however, is engaged in devising automatic checks and indicators for the sake of dispensing with detailed human skill and reducing the spontaneous or thoughtful elements of tending machinery to a minimum. When this minimum is reached the highly-paid skilled workman gives place to the low-skilled woman or child, and eventually the process passes over entirely into the hands of machinery. So long, however, as human labour continues to co-operate with machinery, certain elements of thought and spontaneity adhere to it. These must be taken into account in any estimate of the net educative influence of machinery. But though these mental qualities must not be overlooked, exaggerated importance should not be attached to them. The layman is often apt to esteem too highly the nature of skilled specialist work. A locomotive superintendent of a railway was recently questioned as to the quality of engine-driving. "After twenty years' experience he declared emphatically that the very best engine-drivers were those who were most mechanical and unintelligent in their work, who cared least about the internal mechanism of the engine."[220] Yet engine-driving is far less mechanical and monotonous than ordinary tending of machinery.