The time has come when drudgery must be taken out of labour. It is not
work that men object to, but the element of drudgery. We must drive out
drudgery wherever we find it. We shall never be wholly civilized until
we remove the treadmill from the daily job. Invention is doing this in
some degree now. We have succeeded to a very great extent in relieving
men of the heavier and more onerous jobs that used to sap their
strength, but even when lightening the heavier labour we have not yet
succeeded in removing monotony. That is another field that beckons
us--the abolition of monotony, and in trying to accomplish that we shall
doubtless discover other changes that will have to be made in our
system.
* * * * *
The opportunity to work is now greater than ever it was. The opportunity
to advance is greater. It is true that the young man who enters industry
to-day enters a very different system from that in which the young man
of twenty-five years ago began his career. The system has been tightened
up; there is less play or friction in it; fewer matters are left to the
haphazard will of the individual; the modern worker finds himself part
of an organization which apparently leaves him little initiative.
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