their enormous possibilities of
reaction upon the really living portion of the social organism. This
really living portion seems at first sight to be as deliquescent in its
nature, to be drifting down to as chaotic a structure as either the
non-functional owners that float above it or the unemployed who sink
below. What were once the definite subdivisions of the middle class
modify and lose their boundaries. The retail tradesman of the towns, for
example--once a fairly homogeneous class throughout Europe--expands here
into vast store companies, and dwindles there to be an agent or
collector, seeks employment or topples outright into the abyss. But
under a certain scrutiny one can detect here what we do not detect in
our other two elements, and that is that, going on side by side with the
processes of dissolution and frequently masked by these, there are other
processes by which men, often of the most diverse parentage and
antecedent traditions, are being segregated into a multitude of
specific new groups which may presently develop very distinctive
characters and ideals.

There are, for example, the unorganized myriads that one can cover by
the phrase "mechanics and engineers," if one uses it in its widest
possible sense. At present it would be almost impossible to describe
such a thing as a typical engineer, to predicate any universally
applicable characteristic of the engineer and mechanic. The black-faced,
oily man one figures emerging from the engine-room serves well enough,
until one recalls the sanitary engineer with his additions of crockery
and plumbing, the electrical engineer with his little tests and wires,
the mining engineer, the railway maker, the motor builder, and the
irrigation expert. Even if we take some specific branch of all this huge
mass of new employment the coming of mechanism has brought with it, we
still find an undigested miscellany. Consider the rude levy that is
engaged in supplying and repairing the world's new need of bicycles!
Wheelwrights, watchmakers, blacksmiths, music-dealers, drapers,
sewing-machine repairers, smart errand boys, ironmongers, individuals
from all the older aspects of engineering, have been caught up by the
new development, are all now, with a more or less inadequate knowledge
and training, working in the new service. But is it likely that this
will remain a rude levy? From all these varied people the world requires
certain things, and a failure to obtain them involv