careful survey of the productivity of the different kinds of mechanical devices comes to the conclusion that "a man today is productively worth ten men of the period of 1750 to 1800." 19 The effects of machinery in industry This chapter will be brought to a close by a consideration of some of the personnel changes brought about by the largescale use of machinery in industry. The automobile industry will be taken as typical of modern developments, and free use will be made of a valuable article by Charles Reitell dealing with this topic. 20 He points out how the expert machinist is disappearing from the automotive industry, and continues: This change makes more confusing than ever such terms as "skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers." In lieu of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled there now exist the tenders who operate machines, the technical force who design, plan, schedule, route and cost the work, the clerks, inspectors and foremen who record all the miscellaneous activities of the shop, check the quality and quantity of production and who keep watch on the flow of material. The ability to meet ("to hit") and maintain a constant machine pace; to be able to eliminate all waste and false motions; to follow without wavering printed instructions emanating from an unseen source lodged in some far off planning department-these constitute the requirements of a successful machine tender. The percentage that his actual production is below the standard production set for him is the measurement of the specific tender's inefficiency. And this percentage is more closely related to the conditions of his home life, his health and his financial problems than to any academic classifications of skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled worker. As a superintendent in the Ford plant expressed it: "To attain a normal day's production the worker is timed so as to keep up an energetic gait for eight hours a day-this can only be done when a well-regulated living is carried on by the worker in his home life. Worry, careless living, drunkenness and sickness must all be eliminated if the employe is to maintain his high grade production in this plant." The workers in the automobile industry may be divided into six major groups, as follows: I. The machine tenders (25-40 per cent of work- II. The assemblers (10-15 per cent); these men, III. "Skilled workers" (5-10 per cent); machinists, V. Helpers (ca. 15 per cent); varnish rubbers, VI. Laborers (10-15 per cent); they do carrying, handling, cleaning up, etc. The first two groups are increasing in numbers, the third and sixth groups are decreasing; so that skill and brawn are both slowly being pushed out of the industry, though neither, of course, will ever entirely disappear. The type of man demanded by the work is very different from the man required for other manufacturing tasks of former days: We have a greater demand for nervous and mental activities such as watchfulness, quick judgment, dexterity, guidance, ability, and lastly a nervous endurance to carry through dull, monotonous, fatiguing, rhythmic operations. Such psychological requirements as these, of course, raise extremely grave problems. What manner of man is this who is to be watchful and dexterous for eight hours a day, day in and day out, at tasks which are dull, monotonous, and fatiguing? He would indeed be an athlete of the mind. who could stand up under such a strain and show no effects, both in himself and in generations to come. It is clear that but few men could approach even moderately near to filling such a position without adjusting their whole lives to its requirements. This then is one of the major problems of industry, which, marvelously productive though it be, is geared at such a speed as seriously to transform its human materials in ways the ultimate significance of which we are probably as yet incapable of understanding. REFERENCES 1 Wolfgang Köhler, The Mentality of Apes, trans. by Ella Winter (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1925). 2A. P. M. Fleming and H. J. Brocklehurst, A History of Engineering (London, Black 1925), 116. Fleming and Brocklehurst, 122-123. Charles A. Beard, The Industrial Revolution (London, Sonnenschein, 1902), 38. The data for this section were drawn from a large number of sources, including Fleming and Brocklehurst and articles in the Encyclopedia Americana and Machinery's Encyclopedia (N. Y., Industrial Press, 1917). Ency. Amer., Vol. 25, 563. Ency. Amer., Vol. 25, 564-565. 8 Consult the following references for much additional data: American Machinist, Vol. 60 (1924), 679-683, 723-727; Machinery, Vol. 22 (1915–6), 371–375; Scient. Amer., Vol. 112 (1915), 538–539; Trans. North-East Coast Instit. of Engineers and Shipbuilders, Vol. 35 (1918-9), 179–226; Scient. Amer. Suppl., Vol. 85 (1918), 278-279; Mech. Engineering, Vol. 45 (1925), 151-153; also articles on engineering subjects in the Encyclopedia Americana and Machinery's Encyclopedia, with bibliographies therein. From foreword by J. D. Cormack in J. W. French, Machine Tools Commonly Employed in Modern Engineering Workshops (2 vols., London, Gresham, 1911), xv. 10 Machinery, Vol. 22 (1915–6), 374. 11 Machinery's Ency., Vol. 4, 6. 12 From Henry Ford's autobiography, quoted in Australasian Journ. of Psych. and Philos., Vol. 1 (1923), 297. 13 See references cited in note 5 above, also C. E. Lucke, Power (N. Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1911), and the following articles: Power, Vol. 54 (1921), 584-588; Vol. 58 (1923), 396-397; Vol. 60 (1924), 937–939; Industrial Management, Vol. 60 (1920), 232-239. 14 Ency. Amer., Vol. 25, 545. 15 Fleming and Brocklehurst, 219. 16 Fleming and Brocklehurst, 213. 17 F. R. Low, Power, Power, Vol. 60 (1924), 937. 18 F. R. Low, What power means for civilization, Power, Vol. 58 (1923), 396–7. 19 A. Russell Bond, Human aids to machines, Scient. Amer. Suppl., Vol. 85 (1918), 278-279. 20 Charles Reitell, Machinery and its effect upon the workers in the automotive industry, Annals of the Acad. of Polit. and Soc. Sci., Vol. 116 (1924), 37-43. Symbols 1 Chapter XI Even casual observation suffices to show that many of our experiences function in two rather different settings. In the first place, they obviously exist and are exactly what they are; but in addition they represent or stand for something else which they are not, but to which they direct or refer us. We are all in the habit of responding to things not only for what they are, but also for what they mean. Thus as I walk down the street I suddenly receive a good sound slap on the back. I feel disposed to resent the blow, and turn around with an angry word on my lips—to recognize a friend whom I have not seen for years. My attitude at once changes; the blow is wrested out of one context and placed in another, where it commands an entirely different set of responses, although it remains exactly the same event that it was before. We have already employed the term "natural fact" to indicate a thing as it actually is, irrespective of the meanings we may attach to it. Thus in the above illustration the blow was a natural fact, which was first taken to mean an attack on my person, and immediately thereafter was interpreted as the greeting of a friend. Not all the natural facts which actually affect our lives give rise to specific identifiable meanings, for many things act upon us without our knowledge. There is plenty of indirect evidence to prove that these items often combine or act conjointly to create meanings, but some facts by their intrinsic natures seem fated forever to remain meaningless. This is certainly the case with our own death,* which brings all processes of signification in our life to a close, and can only be experienced anticipatorily, or as dying, but never *Not death in general, of course, for meanings are woven around that, but the concrete event which actually terminates a life. as complete-although it is an obvious fact in human life that men do die, and that death does complete our experience in this world. To summarize: there are an immense number of natural facts; of these relatively a very few affect the organism; and of those which do affect the organism only a very few ever become meanings; and of these meanings many only very inadequately sum up a large number of distinct natural facts, and many are false. Finally, in every culture certain natural facts, either through habit or through deliberate choice come to stand almost invariably in certain settings for other natural facts, to which they are bound by the meanings they evoke. These items may be called symbols. Symbols are perfectly objective phenomena and are directly sharable, whereas meanings are psychological phenomena, and can be shared only indirectly through inference or imaginative reconstruction, based upon the interpretation of symbols or of other meaningful occurrences. Thus in Romeo and Juliet two servants of Capulet meet two servants of Montague, with whom the Capulets are at odds, and the following dialogue ensues:2 Sampson. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin. Gregory. I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list. Sampson. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; A certain piece of bunting with which you and I are familiar is a symbol of our country to both of us, but just exactly what America means to you or to me could only be learned through the careful interpretation of a fairly representative sampling of our relevant behaviors, including both what we say and what we do. Symbols are of many kinds. Spoken or written words, signs, gestures, actions, objects, are all symbols whenever they stand for something other than themselves, so that they are responded to in some measure as if they were that |