ndustry moved bodily to America, and the highly skilled tin workers of
Wales brought a kind of industrial ability that had not hitherto existed
in this country. As for the bulk of skilled immigrants, they do not
represent the highest skill of the countries whence they come.

On the other hand, the European skilled workman is usually better
trained than the American, and in many branches of industry, especially
machinery and ship-building, the English and Scotch immigrants command
those superior positions where an all-round training is required.

This peculiar situation is caused by the highly specialized character of
American industry. In no country has division of labor and machinery
been carried as far as here. By division of labor the skilled trades
have been split up into simple operations, each of which in itself
requires little or no skill, and the boy who starts in as a beginner is
kept at one operation so that he does not learn a trade. The old-time
journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic who measured his customer, cut
the cloth and trimmings, basted, sewed, and pressed the suit. Now we
have factories which make only coats, others which make only vests,
others trousers, and there are children's knee-pants factories and even
ladies' tailor establishments where the former seamstress sees her
precious skill dissipated among a score of unskilled workers. Thus the
journeyman tailor is displaced by the factory, where the coat passes
through the hands of thirty to fifty different men and women, each of
whom can learn his peculiar operation in a month or two. The same is
true in greater or less degree in all industries. Even in the building
trades in the larger cities there are as many kinds of bricklayers as
there are kinds of walls to be built, and as many kinds of carpenters as
there are varieties of woodwork.

So it is with machinery. The American employer does not advertise for a
"machinist"--he wants a "lathe hand" or a "drill-press hand," and the
majority of his "hands" are perhaps only automatic machine tenders. The
employer cannot afford to transfer these hands from one job to another
to enable them to "learn the trade." He must keep them at one operation,
for it is not so much skill that he wants as cheap labor and speed.
Consequently, American industry is not producing all-round mechanics,
and the employers look to Europe for their skilled artisans. In England
the trade-unions have made it their special bus