uscular 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 sh