It is evident that celerity of work is a most important factor in
production. So it might be asked if, under the above system, the
necessary speed of work could be obtained. But there are two kinds
of celerity. There is the celerity which I saw in a Nottingham
lace-factory: full-grown men, with shivering hands and heads,
were feverishly binding together the ends of two threads from the
remnants of cotton-yarn in the bobbins; you hardly could follow their
movements. But the very fact of requiring such kind of rapid work
is the condemnation of the factory system. What has remained of the
human being in those shivering bodies? What will be their outcome?
Why this waste of human force, when it could produce ten times the
value of the odd rests of yarn? This kind of celerity is required
exclusively because of the cheapness of the factory slaves; so let us
hope that no school will ever aim at this kind of quickness in work.
But there is also the time-saving celerity of the well-trained
worker, and this is surely achieved best by the kind of education
which we advocate. However plain his work, the educated worker makes
it better and quicker than the uneducated. Observe, for instance,
how a good worker proceeds in cutting anything--say a piece of
cardboard--and compare his movements with those of an improperly
trained worker. The latter seizes the cardboard, takes the tool
as it is, traces a line in a haphazard way, and begins to cut;
half-way he is tired, and when he has finished his work is worth
nothing; whereas, the former will examine his tool and improve it
if necessary; he will trace the line with exactitude, secure both
cardboard and rule, keep the tool in the right way, cut quite easily,
and give you a piece of good work.
This is the true time-saving celerity, the most appropriate for
economising human labour; and the best means for attaining it is an
education of the most superior kind. The great masters painted with
an astonishing rapidity; but their rapid work was the result of a
great development of intelligence and imagination, of a keen sense
of beauty, of a fine perception of colours. And that is the kind of
rapid work of which humanity is in need.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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