Section LXIII.. Dark Side of the Division of Labor.—Its Gain and Loss.

Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And Loss.

Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration(382) of the workman’s personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.(383) Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.(384) It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man’s position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?(385)(386) The best corrective for the one-sidedness produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.(387)