ng the time pass more
pleasantly."

"How?"

"Oh, there are various things that can be done to achieve this end.
Sometimes fresh buttermilk or some other refreshing drink is passed
down the rows; or on a cool day hot coffee is served. Any little change
such as singing or whistling interrupts the sleepy effect of one
continual process and shifts the mood and spirits of those toiling into
another groove. This is very beneficial. All our students of industrial
methods will tell you that the worst flaw of our present system is the
effect monotony has on the minds of those constantly subjected to it.
Performing without deviation the same mechanical act day after day
deadens the brain and even, in certain cases, produces insanity. It
also kills ambition and creates hopeless, indifferent persons.
Therefore, made wiser by psychology we realize the importance of
stirring the mind out of a fixed rut, or rather a stupidity that verges
on somnambulism, and keeping it alert and active. Sheep growers, for
example, try in every way to divert the minds of their shepherds lest
the continual watching of a slowly moving flock paralyze their minds
and get them _locoed_."

"Really?"

"Your mother will tell you that. That is why a shepherd's pipe is such
a splendid thing. To pick out a tune and listen to it starts the mind
out of its trance and promotes mental exercise. It does what gymnastics
do for the body."

"But all our factories keep men at a single task," Carl objected.

"You mean the piece-work system? Aye, I know," nodded his uncle. "And
as we grow wiser, and come to care more for our fellows, we begin to
wonder whether so much specializing is as fine a notion as we at first
thought it. It makes for efficiency, for without question a man who
does just one thing over and over becomes expert at his particular job;
but does he not in time, because of his very expertness, lapse into a
machine whose hands move automatically and whose mind is idle? Such a
result is fatal both to his intellect and his will. He becomes passive
until at length all initiative is destroyed. For many years the colored
people of the South reaped precisely this harvest of mental inertia.
Now, thank heaven, they are rousing out of the lethargy that has been
their inheritance and their brains are getting to work. It will,
however, take years, perhaps generations, for some of them to work up
to a normal mental activity and intelligence; but if they persist
r