And this is the conclusion
which Professor Marshall himself asserts--
"Since machinery does not encroach much upon that manual work which
requires judgment, while the management of machinery does require
judgment, there is a much greater demand now than formerly for
intelligence and resource. Those qualities which enable men to decide
rightly and quickly in new and difficult cases, are the common property
of the better class of workmen in almost every trade, and a person who
has acquired them in one trade can easily transfer them to another."
If this is true, it signifies that the formal specialization of the
worker, which comes from his attendance on a more and more specialized
piece of machinery, does not really narrow and degrade his industrial
life, but supplies a certain education of the judgment and intelligence
which has a general value that more than compensates the apparent
specialization of manual functions. The very fact that the worker's
services are still required is a proof that his work is less automatic
(i.e. more intelligent) than that of the most delicate machinery in use;
and since the work which requires less intelligence is continually being
taken over by machinery, the work which remains would seem to require a
constantly higher average of intelligence. It is, of course, true that
there are certain kinds of work which can never be done by machinery,
because they require a little care and a little judgment, while that
care and judgment is so slight as to supply no real food for thought, or
education for the judgment.
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