that the boy perhaps becomes stranded in
front of a machine which does nothing but punch out the covers for tin
cans, or cut pieces of leather for the heels of shoes, or some other finer
operation in manufacture. Once he has mastered the comparatively simple
method of operating his particular machine, the boy is likely to remain
there for all time. His employer--perhaps short-sighted--has no desire to
advance him, because this would mean breaking in another boy to handle his
machine. Also, it would mean paying more money.

Al Priddy, in his illuminating book, "Man or Machine--Which?"[9] thus
describes the case of the slave to the machine:

[Footnote 9: The Pilgrim Press, Boston.]

"The workingman has been taught that his chief asset is skill. It has been
his stocks, his bonds, the pride of his life. Poor as to purse and
impoverished in his household; his cupboard bare, his last penny spent on
a bread crust, he is not humbled; no, he merely stretches out his ten
fingers and two callous palms, exactly as a proud king extends his
diamond-tipped sceptre, to show you that which upholds him in his
birthright. 'My skill is my portion given to the world,' he says. 'I shall
not want. See, I am without a penny. I touch this bar of steel, and it
becomes a scissors blade. My skill did it. I take this stick of oak and it
becomes a chair rung. My skill is the grandest magic on earth, the common
magic of every day. By it I live and because of it I hold my head royal
high.'

"But the machine now attacks and displaces this skill. The cunning of
trained fingers is transferred to cranks, cogs and belts. The trade
secrets are objectified in mechanical form; able to mix the product,
compound the chemicals, or make the notch at the right place.

"Besides this loss of skill, the workman loses, in the grind of the
machine, his sense of the value of his work. Next to his pride of skill
the workman has always been proud to be the connoisseur: stand back near
the light with his product on his upraised hand, showing to all passers-by
what he has done. Perhaps it was a red morocco slipper for a dancer, or a
pearl button to go on the cloak of a little child, or maybe it was a
horseshoe to go on the mayor's carriage horse. On a day a party of
visitors would come to the little shop and the owner would pick up a
hand-forged hammer and say, 'See what John made!' But, in our modern
industry, no one man ever completes a task. Each task is subdivided i